Sailing on the high seas

I'm up at 6am after a great night sleep and I am starving as I hadn't had anything to eat the previous day so I grab some cereal before heading up to see what's up.  Kent is up and is taking a smoke and has made coffee (it needs the generator) so he's my new best friend!  It's still blowing like crazy and although we're in a wide open area with only sea reeds for protection, Kristy is barely moving.  The wind is pushing the waves right into the bay but we're about at high tide (supposed to be at 7am) so prepare the boat for departure to Jacksonville where Kent had found a marina that he could berth Kristy at until December. We haul up anchor and I wash it and the chain down as it comes up with the wash down pump up front (what luxury).  On my boat, I use the Armstrong method and drag everything a few hundred yards to clean off all the muck.   We're doing 6 knots through the water but only 2 over ground... hmmm... the tide must still be coming in...  no...

Today, we spent the day at anchor in St. Mary's Bay with Kent on the  iPhone  calling marina's in Florida looking for a place to keep the boat (he had one when we left but they sent him a note saying they'd not been able to repair the damage from Hurricane Irma and he needed to  find another place).   We knew that Irma went though here but it was supposedly pretty spent when it got this high... from the trees around here, I'd hate to have seen what it did to Key West! While Kent was working on finding a place to keep the boat until he and Iris make it back down here in December to start cruising the Caribbean (they are going to Mozambique for three weeks in the interim), Steve and I tried to figure out what was going on with the new AIS that Kent had had installed (professionally) the week before our departure.  While we could hear things on our VHF, nobody ever responded (we could hear ourselves on the handheld)...

It's 4am and I’m on my own again. Again, I spent most of my watch sitting on the aft cabin looking at the stars and Milky Way.  I watched Mars, Venus, the moon and then the sun come up to a beautiful sky. Winds were still very light so we were still motoring and this time I only had to dodge a few fishing boats that I could see even before the radar picked them up (AIS was still only good to within about 2 nautical miles but we didn't get any closer than about 8 to any of these).  It was starting to get a bit cloudy just as the sun was coming up so unfortunately it wasn't quite as good as I was hoping it could be but I know this won't be my last sunrise at sea! My first sunrise watch. Just after the sunrise, the forecasted strong winds started to show up and I had to dodge a thunderstorm that seemed to go from one horizon to the other across our path.  There was a "sucker hole" just to the east of it which was on our direct course (it...

This is a shot of the moon rising over the Atlantic Ocean at 3am on a nearly calm morning. Unfortunately I took this on my iPhone and the boat was moving enough to blur it substantially.  The moon was actually just a crescent moon nearly completely dark.  I do like how the moonlight shines on the ocean in our trail. About 3am, the crescent moon came up on our stern and lit up the flat seas enough to read by. I finished my watch at 4am and handed it over to Steve for the sunrise watch. I wanted to stay up for it but couldn’t make it. Tonight it’s my turn for the sunrise but we may be into the windy winds from the north so not sure if I’ll see it or not.  Second night - it's 3am on my midnight to 4am watch.  The waters are nearly calm except for the big gentle rollers still coming out of the north.  The air is clearing and visibility is at least 20 miles.  The wind is nearly absent so we're cruising under the Iron Genny (the motor).  We're about ...

We’re out in the Atlantic at 7:30am after leaving St. Michael’s at 11:30am the previous morning. The winds are doing 15-25 kts gusting to 30. The seas are 3-4’ out of the north-east with big rollers of 6-10’ added to them every 15 seconds or so from the north added to them. I’m feeling pretty good and the boat handles them with aplomb. Short video of our sail to Cape Hateras We sail on a broad reach (the apparent wind is about 60º off of our stern on the port side) with me helming most of the way up to the top end of Cape Hateras at 7-10kts.  We've been making excellent time and these strong winds are really pushing us along.  It's been a long night though so turned the helm over to Steve and decided to have a nap.   When I got back up a few hours later, I see that we’re doing only 3 kts with a south wind of less than 5 kts so not only is it no longer on our tail (which this big old girl likes best) but it's now almost on our nose.   The seas are still ...

We set sail at 11:30am after 2 days of provisioning and upgrading the boat and adding a new aluminum bottomed dingy and life raft.  The wind is forecast to stay about 15-20 knots out of the north east so we motor off the dock and immediately put up all sails for a nice broad reach down Chesapeake Bay. It's a nice day, partly cloudy and partly sunny and about 25ºC.  Initially just a few local sail and fishing boats but as we get into the main part of the Chesapeake we start seeing tug boats towing huge barges and container ships.   Kent's recently installed Automated Information System seems to be picking up these targets but only once they get quite close (within 2 miles).  As these ships are moving at anywhere from 13 to 25 knots and when these are coming at you at a relative velocity of a mile every 2-3 minutes it’s not good enough to rely upon as it doesn't give us much warning.  There seems to be some issue with the VHF antenna, the splitter, the c...

S/V Kristy.  Kent Robertson's Amel Super Maramu 2000.   OK, so my perfect boat is the Amel Super Maramu (which is Polynesian for Tradewind) 2000.  It has been that way for decades.  So just why do I love these Amel's anyway you ask?  Well for lots of reasons  I guess, but when it comes down to it, I've always just loved the looks of them.   To me, a proper sailboat has a ketch rig where there are two masts, the aft one, called the mizzen mast, is smaller than the main but still in front of the rudder (unlike a yawl which is usually much smaller and behind the rudder).  Schooner's (two or more masts with the aft one as tall as or taller than the front) are even prettier but are pretty much impractical for 1-2 people to sail and aren't as good downwind anyway.  The idea behind a ketch rig is to allow the same amount of sail area to be carried over more sails making each more manageable in heavy conditions.  Before electrically power...