I'm updating this email on the night watch at 0500 on Wednesday morning. We started motoring for Spanish Wells at 1000 from our anchorage 10 miles east of Port Lucaya. We're 85 miles from Spanish Wells right now. I expect to get there around 3PM. We're at least 30 miles from any land. The winds are none to light with 1 foot waves at the start, but almost calm now. The winds were suppose to pick up and clock around to the north, but we haven't seen it. The winds are out of the northeast such as they are.
We didn't really want to do much traveling at night, but it worked out to be our safest plan. I've got Ouida starting to adjust to constantly changing conditions. She said today that she hasn't said "You keep changing your mind!" in a while. She's realized you need a primary plan, a backup plan, and a backup to your backup plan. When you've come up with those, you throw them away and come up with a new plan. The big key is being flexible. That's where having a catamaran is so much better than a monohull. There's much more redundancy built in. We would still be in Hilton Head if we were on a monohull.
The crossing from West Palm Beach Florida to Port Lucaya, Bahamas was easy, but slow. We counted on 6 knots and thought we could make Bimini by 4 PM with the wind that we had. We quickly saw we were only making 3.9 knots headway so we cut the engines and sailed the whole way. Since we knew we weren't going to make it to our destination in daylight, we just adjusted our plan to sail all night. There were ships everywhere on radar. That helps keep you awake on night watch.
The best advise we received about the crossing was "Don't make it bigger than what it is." It's only 45 miles across which we used to do regularly on Lake Ontario. Granted the current makes it a little more interesting.
We arrived right at first daylight at our alternate destination of Port Lucaya. It worked out great. The Lucaya Marina is filled with shops and restaurants and made a perfect place to celebrate New Years Eve. They had a live band in the square and Ouida kidnapped a local woman to dance with. I supplied the drinks from the boat and watched the spectacle. I'm not speaking of the light show or the concert. The real spectacle is Ouida having fun on the dance floor. She gathers the women. She even ended up on stage. It's my entertainment since I find dancing myself to be as pointless as a chicken running with its head cut off. Even with that, I had enough drinks in me to push past the hoarding men and dance with the princess just prior to and after midnight. I remember having fun at the time but dancing still makes no sense to me sober.
There have been a ton of repairs and services we've had to do on Lady Valkyrie. Just about everything on the boat has broken at least once. I'm starting to think I can even fix a broken heart with enough cash for parts. The boat has broken parts everywhere, but everything we need to progress is working. The sea water pump on the port engine is leaking behind the cam shaft which explains the steam. I'm ordered a new one Monday from Depco Pumps for $225 plus $50 shipping which seems under par. We're real cruisers now. Anything under $300 sounds cheap to us.
We had the pump shipped to the Spanish Wells. They said 6-10 days for shipping. That will be fine. We plan on being in Spanish Wells for a few days, but we're going to pick up the pace after that.
The GPS for the chartplotter isn't working despite replacing it twice. I'm going to try going old school with NMEA 0183. I tried it before, but I'm not sure I did it right. I'm guessing my GPS is broken as well as the chartplotter seatalk2 port. I returned the two new GPS units I bought. Thank you Amazon.com. We're doing fine with Navionics on our tablet, phones, and our marine hand held
GPS. I'll have to send the chartplotter back to Raymarine when we reach St. Croix. I can't afford to be without out it for three weeks right now.
We replaced the voltage regulator on our generator for $600 before we left. That hurt, but we're making all of the repairs ourselves so we're learning. It's back to working great.
I've always understood that marine batteries to be used between 70 and 85% and charged to 100% monthly, but they have this system set to keep the battery bank full. We have a dozen batteries on this boat. Seems to be working out fine.
Our red and green nav lights didn't come on tonight. They were working. I'm not standing on the bow to fix them at night in the middle of the ocean. We're running under the white steaming light in the front and the white stern nav light. That and a big flashlight on the sails if Ouida finds a ship within 4 miles of us on radar. To be fair to her, I keep the ships at least a mile distance at night. That's close enough considering the wake these freighters and cruise ships put out. If you think
you're alone on the seas, just expand your radar. There has been at least one or two ships within 15 miles constantly. Although, I'm about to lose my only ship on radar now.
It's 0600 AM now and it will start to get daylight very soon. It's the first night after a full moon so the visibility has been awesome. 6 AM also means Chris Parker will be starting his weather broadcast on the SSB (Marine HAM Radio). He's alright for free, but I wouldn't pay for him. He's kind of a safety net for newbies. I've been reading weather for 30 years as a pilot so I have my bias. If I listened to him, we wouldn't have left the anchorage yesterday. It hasn't been sailing weather, but it's been a very peaceful motoring in calm conditions. You can't pass that up when you're trying to move southeast against the trade winds.
I'm still not happy with our boat speed, but it's tough to tell with the speedometer not working. I'm basing our speeds off the GPS which is what's ultimately important, but it doesn't give our over water speed.
The previous owners had replaced the propeller on the starboard engine not long before selling our Lady to us. They received conflicting information on prop size from Admiral and Yanmar. They went with the smaller size recommended by the engine manufacturer. Thus the
starboard side doesn't seem to have the umph that it should, but it works! That's something and it's not leaking sea water.
I might just have unrealistic expectations when it comes to speed. Sailing 30 knots on our Hobie Tiger or 17 knots on our Corsair F-27 trimaran really spoils you. I would love to have the 8 knots to windward that I use to complain about on the F-27.
I'm now planning on a moving average of 4 knots with one engine and it seems to be working out. I was expecting for the wind to fill in hours ago, but PredictWind.com was wrong about that. There's still 40 miles to go and time to get some sailing in yet.
The water maker is working fine. It's still saying about 500 ppm at the limit, but that's fine. Ouida wants to try it in the open water and see if it's better.
The dinghy engine has been great except for the one night which I'm attributing to operator error. I'm guessing I forgot to vent the cap or something simple. It's the easiest starting engine, I've worked with. Start with the first half pulp from even my left hand.
The alternator light is still on with the starboard engine, but it's still charging the batteries fine. The VHF issue is still there. I haven't tried fixing it yet, but it's not urgent. We listen on our hand held VHF and then turn down the squelch on the main VHF if necessary. I'll try swapping the VHF out with the spare one we have.
Ouida and I took some time to relax and actually enjoy ourselves with swimming and snorkeling on the anchor just west of Port Lucaya. Chopper is now freely jumping off the stern and swimming with us. He swims to shore with us to go to the bathroom and just swims around. He actually jumped off a 5 foot embankment back into the water to follow us back to the boat the first day at anchorage. I
couldn't get him to repeat the jump in the following days so he got a friendly push. He will still climb on my head if he gets the chance rather than swim. I've had him ride on my back while I swim with fins on like a surfboard. He swims great and I think he's starting to like it some. He can climb up the swim ladder back on to the boat on his own as well. This is all good stuff.
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