On top of that, I was a little seasick for much of the trip, but felt much better once I got my sea legs on Sunday morning. However, by that time we were loosing the wind, and it was too late to make it around Cape St George and Cape San Blas. We ended up motoring for a few hours on Sunday until the winds picked back up, and sailed into St George Bay by around 1700.
All in all it was a great trip. This was my first extended trip offshore as well as the first time I was over 30nm offshore. It was also my first multi-night voyage. I was unsure how well I'd handle multiple nights standing watch alone, but after the second night, I fell into a routine and all went well.
At first I was a bit worried and set the timer on my iphone to ever 15 minutes. I'd try to sleep down below, getting up each time it went off to check for boats. I later got more comfortable and extended it to 30 minutes and was able to actually sleep some, and even dream during that short time. However, I'm concerned about relying on the iphone timer, so I'll get a few kitchen timers before the next trip.
While I was at least say 50nm offshore, I didn't see a single vessel, so I could have easily extended it to an hour or more. It all depends on where you are and the likelihood of encountering another vessel. At night where I was, that risk was practically zero, however 30 minutes seemed to work fine, so I'll play it by ear next time..
Although most of the trip was pretty bumpy, the only bad weather we had was on Saturday. A couple lines of thunderstorms passed over around 1000. We had winds up to 35 knots, heavy rain, and some lightening, but no strikes nearby.
As the horizon darkened and the thunderstorms approached, I rolled in most of the jib and by the time I had the main double reefed, the winds had already picked up. I disengaged the wind vane, which worked perfectly throughout the trip, and removed the plywood vane so the winds wouldn't damage it -- learned that off North Carolina last fall.
We didn't get any rain with the first line, but before I could set up and start sailing again, a second line approached. This time I could see we were in for some heavy rain -- the sea was flattened and covered with smoke. It was pretty awesome. It was warm out, so I only had on shorts, my foul weather jacket, harness and tether. I got soaking wet and started getting cold, so I finally just hove to and went below to wait it out.
Even hove to, the boat was making a terrible motion, hence the seasickness. I guess it was more like fore-reaching. I played around with it, but couldn't quite get her to "park." Had I felt better, I would have done more experimenting, but fore-reaching was fine. So I turned on the anchor light, and tried to sleep till it calmed down.
About an hour later, it finally calmed down, so I tacked, shook out the reef and started sailing again. The wind had also shifted from the SW to the WNW, so we steered a northerly course, which was the best we could do since our destination was NW of us. Within the next hour or so, we picked up speed and the motion got worse and worse as the winds got up to 25 knots and the seas about 6', mostly on my beam and port quarter.
At this point, I reefed again -- only set up to double reef at this point -- and hove to. Since this wasn't in the forecast, and I'd been out a couple days, I tried to get updated weather from the Maritime Net. However, the NOAA forecast they read me was basically the same one I'd had before leaving, calling for 10-15 knot winds and 2-4 seas from the SW.
I asked one of the controllers to check passageweather.com for a more accurate forecast, but for some reason, he was uncomfortable with that. He finally did go online and look, and the winds forecast for my area were consistent with what I was experiencing. However, when I asked him to tell he how long it was expected and in which direction the winds would be lighter and from a favorable direction, he refused to help.
He kept saying he couldn't advise me and was unfamiliar with the site. All I wanted him to do was tell me what the forecast showed -- it's essentially a series of weather charts every 3, 6, or 12 hours showing wind speed and direction. Pretty simple stuff I routinely relayed to other mm's, but I finally gave up and signed off.
I figured my best bet was to continue north -- actually a little east of north -- and wait for the winds to abate, which they did after a few hours. I was then able to point a little higher, and still hoped to clear Cape San Blas before the winds switched to the NW and began to die down on Sunday and Monday.
Although I made good time through the night, by Sunday morning we were unable to make much more progress westward without tacking and heading SW, so I decided to make for Carrabelle instead. Even so, we started loosing wind and motored a few hours to make sure we could get far enough west to make the inlet and get in before dark.
Luckily, the wind picked up again in the afternoon, and we were able to sail the last couple of hours all the way through the inlet and to the anchorage next to Dog Island. It's not well protected, but we're in the lee of the island right now and the winds are light. We'll move over Apalachicola and a better anchorage either this afternoon or tomorrow.
Position report watch:
I tried to post my position 5 times during my crossing, 2 with the MMSN, and 3 with the Waterway Net, and only 3 of them actually made it to shiptrak. Although the two posted to the MMSN -- actually the same report I tried to send two separate times -- got posted, both had inaccurate positions, and one was off by a full degree, that's 60 miles. Part of this is a bad antenna, but it's not rocket science either, and with patience accurate positions can be taken and reported.
The reports I made to the Waterway Net shouldn't have been a problem, since my antenna works well on 40-meters. However, even though I specifically asked them to post my position to ship track, and they said they would, only one was posted, and it was posted by my friend Paul, KM4MA, who's also a MMSN net controller.
Needless to say, I won't be checking into the Waterway Net again, and certainly won't give them a position report unless I personally speak to Paul. Paul's one of, if not the, best net controllers out there. There are also half a dozen or so other MMSN controllers who are just as good and can also be trusted to take, and enter, accurate position reports, but unfortunately some of the others seem more concerned with rag chewing than looking for and helping maritime mobiles. It's almost as if they consider a weak mm an annoyance.
I'd noticed, documented, and reported the alarming number of reports I'd heard on the air that never got properly entered, but after the negative reactions I got to this and other comments I made concerning handling of mm's, I decided to leave the net. This crossing was sort of an experiment, and the results weren't terribly promising. Therefore, I plan to get setup to use Winlink exclusively from now on.
My only problem right now is a power hungry laptop, but I'll replace that before I head out again. They are getting better and cheaper all the time, so I'll wait till right before I go.
Zoe watch:
Alas, she did not enjoy the first part of the trip at all. In fact, she, willingly, stayed in the cabin for almost the entire trip, only coming on deck Sunday when things calmed down a bit. We'll both get better with more experience, so I think she'll be okay. Right now she's sleeping on top of the deflated dinghy on the foredeck, and happy to be at anchor, as am I.
No comments:
Post a Comment