Day 1 - Who knew the Chesapeake could be so busy?

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 cables between them or the AIS unit itself.  We fire up the new radar and see that we can see the ships out to about 8-12 miles so we relax a bit as that gives us about 15 minutes notice.  The Chesapeake is quite busy though as we have at least one target in sight pretty much at all times.  We are heading down past Washington out to the entrance past Norfolk and have about 130 miles of this ahead of us.

The seas started out at about 1-2 feet but over the course of the afternoon the winds and waves picked up so that we are starting to see seas of 4-6' and winds up to 25 knots.  The boat is moving very well at speeds up to about 8-10 knots and I barely feel the seas that in my boat would be providing a very wet ride.  It's very pleasant in the cockpit and other than the sound of the wind in the rigging and the gentle up and down of the boat as the swells pass us by, it barely feels like we are moving although we're doing almost twice as fast as my boat has ever done.

Night comes quickly and it’s time for dinner (Kent makes a Carolina Sausage mix (Brats with coleslaw and mustard in a wrap with a side of chips.) Delicious!  I’m still full of Piss and Vinegar so I take the first watch until about 2am to let the guys sleep and then again from 4am until 6am as we had to gybe twice to make it down the twisty channel. We stayed way off to starboard so a cruise ship, about 5 cargo ships, a naval minesweeper and a few tugs pulling enormous barges about a half mile back from them could pass us safely by.   It's about now about 11pm and the clouds are low, there is a bit of fog and I can hear the F-35's at Patuxent River taking off over top of the boat as we go by the Naval Air Station.  This is the base that trains and hosts the Navy Test Pilot's squadrons and they are busy doing circuits.  I can see their landing lights as they come in on the approach but they are above the clouds so I can't see much.  The sound as they take off is quite impressive though as they can't be much more than 1000' over head as we're right off the end of the runway and they seem to be staying low due to DC traffic.  Not long after that we pass the Potomac River (that Washington DC is on) and shipping traffic increases even more.  The visibility goes down with a bit of fog coming off the warm waters in the cool night air but I can still see the lights of the ships 4-6 miles away.  

It's 1:30am and we've been following about 6 miles behind this massive big tugboat towing a large barge.  Every once in a while he lights up the entire sky by shining a huge array of bright lights back towards me to check over his tow.  No chance that I will lose sight of him until we get to the twisty bits closer to the bridge and tunnel.  We had originally planned to go under the bridge and out into the Atlantic but as it's so busy and we'll be doing it before dawn, we make the call to go a little further south and pass over the tunnel instead.  The wind has consistently been off of our starboard quarter out of the north east but we have to turn south from our easterly heading and therefore will have to do some gybes (downwind turns from having the wind on one stern quarter unto the other) in this strong wind in a few hours.  Kent wakes up and takes over from me at 2am but we agree that we should have all hands on deck to do the gybes around 4am as it will be the first sail change we'll have made as a crew and we should all be there for them.

After I get up for the 4am watch, I’m back at the helm with Kent riding shotgun. Steve wakes up and we get ready for the couple of gybes.  Gybes are a bit scary in strong winds as the booms slam from one side of the boat unto the other.  We'd been riding very close to dead downwind with the mainsail and mizzen booms hard over to port.  As we were concerned about an unintentional gybe, we had lashed the boom over to the port side with a block and tackle set called a "preventer".  This device is intended to ensure that the boom doesn't come racing across the boat and slam into the limits on the other side.  It isn't dangerous in this boat as both booms are well away from the cockpit but the force of the full sails going from one side to the other at high speed can damage the rig.   This preventer is the only sailing control that requires one of us to leave the cockpit (it would be possible to rig two much longer preventers to keep all of the controls within the cockpit).  

To do a gybe in these conditions, Kent puts on his harness, straps on to the jacklines (lines that run from the front of the boat to the back down the sides of the boat to keep you on the boat) and then clambers up the side to the preventer.  It is attached to an eye at the rub rail at one end and to the end of the boom at the other.  His job is to take the side of the tackle from one side and put it on the other once we have swung the boom across.   

Steve cranks on the winch to move the traveller from the port side to the neutral position in the middle.  I then make the turn which causes the boom to cross to the other side (through a very small angle as it's now going from a bit to one side to a bit on the other).  Now that the boom is on the right side, Steven cranks some more on the traveller winch to move it all the way to the new side and then Kent attaches the bottom of the preventer to that rail to keep the boom to that side.  In about 8 miles (an hour at these speeds), we do another gybe so it's all hands again but now we'll have the wind on our port side for the next 8 hours or so.

The traveller is that track with the green/white ropes in it in front of the cockpit windows.  The "car" is a movable device which attaches to the pulleys holding down the mainsheet (the blue and white ropes that are mostly vertical and are attached to the end of the boom.  

The traveller is moved from one side of the boat to the other by lifting up on that knob in front of the winch and moving it to the side you want the traveller to go and then cranking the winch to move the traveller as far as you want it.  When you want to lock it in place, you move the knob back to the centre position.  You need to be somewhat careful as the traveller is under a lot of tension and it can turn the winch handle on you if you aren't holding it strongly as there is no ratchet mechanism preventing it like with a normal winch.  

It's pitch black but we can see the lights of the road leading to and out of the tunnel and we figure that the sun will be rising just as we go over the tunnel.  As we approach the tunnel, it’s clear from the radar that the gps track we had laid was going to take through the low bridge road leading up to the tunnel and not across the tunnel itself. When we laid the path, it looked like the tunnel was much wider so we had laid a path to take us well away from the narrow shipping lane but as we approached, the radar (and then our eyes) was saying the boat wouldn’t go under a 4’ high bridge so we deviated south to take on the shipping channel. Just as we were about to go through a big old navy minesweeper was about the same distance away from it as us we were and heading into the bay from the ocean. We were both approaching the entrance at an angle from the north and while we had starboard right of way, we decided to make a show of ducking behind him and he bolted through at 20 kts giving us lots of room to get through the narrow channel on our own. Don't mess with the US Navy.  

It's about 7am and we're out in the ocean now with the swells running from 6-8' and the wind still on our port quarter as we race east to round Cape Hateras.  It's time for me to take a nap so I hand the boat over to Steve and head up to the forward cabin for a well deserved rest after such a hectic first night "at sea".  Next major point is Cape Hateras, the most eastern point in the US south of Cape Cod and about 100 nautical miles to the east.  The weather can be particularly nasty there as the Gulf Stream comes in very close to that heand the depths change from over 1000' deep to nothing in just a few miles which causes the waves to get quite steep.  The forecast however is for the winds to die down by the time we get there so I'm not expecting a wild ride.

Cape Hateras is just above the G in Google.  While you can go inside, the waters are very shallow and we're taking advantage of the strong North East winds for a good ride east and south.