March 9, 2008

We hauled anchor yesterday at around 0700 for the 40 mile trip to Long Island. At low tide there would be a 10 mile section of our route that has some sketchy depths for us.

Low tide was just after 1400 hours. We had 21 miles to travel before we reached the shallow section. The wind was supposed to be between 10 and15 knots allowing us a beam reach, so conservatively figuring 5 knots of boat speed should get us there by 1100. That would mean a falling tide, but still 3 hours before low tide.

As soon as we had the anchor up the sails were raised and the engine switched off. It was like somebody had yelled “go”. We were easily reaching along at 7 knots with the full main and only half the genoa out. We arrived at the beginning of the sketchy section before 1000. So we were an hour ahead of schedule. Excellent.

The first part of the shallow section had us almost dead into the wind for 7 miles. So we had to furl the genoa and motor sail for an hour. Once through that section we turned more north and were able to redeploy the entire genoa and kill the engine again. That left us with a wonderful 2 hour sail to cover the last 12 miles to the anchorage.

The anchorage in Long Island is inside a large hook with excellent protection from every direction but the south through southwest. We had stopped here on our way south so we anchored in almost the same spot we were last time.

We’ve been pretty disappointed in the lack of power that dinghy engine puts out. It moves the dinghy along well enough, but on a lot of occasions the trip in the dinghy is a long, slow wet affair. We don’t have enough power to get the dink up on plane with both of us in it. As a result there have been a lot of places that we might have taken the dinghy too, but haven’t because it’s just not worth it.

Here in Long Island there may be a remedy for that. We can buy a 15 horsepower Yamaha here for just over $1600, hell, our 6 hp Mercury cost us over $1800 back in the states. We should also be able to sell our 6 hp engine once we reach Georgetown, so it’s pretty much a no brainer. So today is Sunday and nothing is open here on Sunday so we’ll find out in the morning if there’s an engine in stock.

Our American flag hangs from a small pulley a third of the way up the backstay. The other day the pulley failed and the whole shebang fell to the deck. This morning it was nice and calm so today was the day to go up and replace it. I hooked my bosuns chair to the backstay and then to the main halyard. At the other end of the halyard I added some line so it would reach the windlass capstan.

So the line ran from the windlass at the bow, up and over the masthead and back down to the stern. Christy wrapped a few turns of the line around the capstan and used the windlass to haul me up the backstay. It worked like a charm, the defective block was replaced and thankfully nobody was maimed. Excellent.

Boat Name of the Day. ‘Quitcherbitchin’. It’s a sailboat anchored near us. It’s not really that funny until you hear them hailing their shore party out in their dinghy which they’ve named ‘Shut Up’. So it goes something like…..Shut up, shut up, Quit yer bitchin, quit yer bitchin. Then they come back with Quit yer bitchin, Shut up. If they’re calling another boat it’s pretty funny too. It goes something like….Veranda, Veranda, Quit yer bitchin. They’ve got young kids onboard so when they do the hailing it’s even funnier.