Cruising Life Six Weeks In

(By Steve) Here are some reflections and thinking about the cruising life six weeks in.

PLANS AND PLANNING - This is an area of huge change. In my previous life I could pretty well make most things happen when, where and how I wanted them to happen. That was what it was like being the boss and being in control. That was one of the things that made me successful, the ability to make things happen. It took me about 4 weeks of frustration with the weather, the boat and the lack of skill (see below) to understand that you plan for the weather in the context of where you want to go and what you want to do, i.e. , the weather makes certain options available or not as the case may be and you plan within those 'givens'. If you want to be leisure sailors (and we do) then going TO where the wind is coming FROM is not a plan that will deliver leisure sailing. Here the prevailing wind is East which makes going up the Keys (heading east) difficult. The net effect of that is 50% of the time the wind is good to sail from East to West, i.e., down the Keys, 30% of the time the wind is too strong or to little to sail at all and only 20% of the time can you sail up the Keys. In addition you can only know this about 5 days out at the most. If you need to be in a particular place and that involves goes East then you need to leave plenty of slack in the schedule to make sure you can do it without having to bash into a strong headwind.

THE LIFESTYLE AND BECOMING ADVENTURING LOAFERS - The lifestyle seems, so far, to be appealing. I suspect that history will show that sailing is just one type of adventure of a number of types of adventures we shall have in our 'adventuring loafers' phase. It is the freedom to have adventures and the satisfaction that comes from those adventures that replaces the interest and satisfaction that once came from a career. We have set out a plan for the rest of the year to have the first few adventures in which we expect to be very many adventures in the coming years. This years list looks like:

- Dry Tortugas Cruise from the middle of Jan to the middle of Feb
- Visit back to England from middle of Feb to early March
- Bahamas Cruise from early March to late May, hauling the boat for the Hurricane Season at the end of it
- Holiday Rental Property Acquisition in the UK in June
- Motorbike Tour of Ireland in July
- Summer at Highcroft (our home in the UK) July and August
- European Tandem Bicycle Tour Sept
- Prepare UK Holiday Property and Highcroft for Rent Oct and Nov
- Start 09/10 Carribean Cruise December 09

CRUSING SKILLS - From 'expert' to novice in one move!! Expert at Shared Services, Human Resource Management before that and Avionics Systems before that, I now find myself on a very steep learning curve with more to learn than ever I imagined there would be.

Weather: This fundamentally determines what will be possible and when. It seems to go hand in glove with sailing. We have both read a book by a very experienced cruiser about how to make passages against the prevailing wind, the combination of this and the experience of the last few weeks has taught us
- Do not try to sail or motor to windward in more than about 10-15 knots of wind
- The path into the prevailing wind is best traveled by taking advantage of the wind when it doesnÕt blow from the usual direction but from some other direction and by taking a route which allows you to make progress to windward via a series of ÒlegsÓ a bit like really big tacks when it does.
- Wind speed that we find enjoyable to sail in is a function of where the wind is coming from, not just the strength of it. Into wind 10-15 is enough, beam reach 15-20 is comfortable and with the wind behind you then 25 is OK. Sailing directly into 25 knots though would be positively unpleasant! This is a function of the effect the boat speed has on the apparent wind over the boat - going into wind add boat speed to wind speed to get apparent wind and going down wind subtract it.
- The angle of the wind to the boat and the sails also affects the heeling of the boat. Sailing close to the wind (angle between boat and wind 50 degrees) the lift coming off the sails is tending to heel the boat more and drive it forward less.

In this part of the world the weather is predictable enough for about 4 to 5 days to plan that far ahead providing that the plan is kept under constant review as events unfold. The first thing you need to know before you can plan what you are going to do is what the weather is going to do. The language of the forecasts is subtle, here are some examples that we have learnt over the past few weeks:

- Arctic High Pressure: Bloody Cold Air
- Intensive High Pressure: Very High Pressure which causes some pretty strong winds whilst it builds

In the forecasts you tend to get 2 to 3 days of detail (today, tonight, tomorrow, tomorrow night, the day after). Then you get some longer term stuff that you need to listen to carefully for clues as to what will probably happen bearing in mind that the further out the forecast the more likely it is to be wrong.

- Breezy: Winds between 15 and 20 knots
- Windy: Winds 20 to 25 knots with higher gusts

Couple this with the synopsis and you can get a good idea for 5 days out. A weak cold front may pass over the keys late Monday or Monday night translates, along with the other information you are given, into you can expect the winds to come out of the NE or E (prevailing direction in the winter) and swing through SE, S, SW, W and NW through Monday and Monday night and swing into the NE later on Tuesday settling back to the prevailing direction. The strength is more likely to be 15-20 rather than 20-30 based on the assumption that it is a weak cold front and the use of the word breezy in the outlook. Translating this into a plan where we want to head West; we can move tomorrow (Sun) and we could move Monday early on then we need to sit tight for a day or so and let the front go through then we can carry on. If we want to go East then we would begin to move Monday and, if the wind stays in the close to 15 knot range we could move Tuesday as well ( or even sail overnight). Then we would need to sit tight or move in a direction which allows us to sail in the prevailing winds.

LOGISTICS & RESOURCES - Provisioning, fuel, water and waste disposal are all things which take more attention than they do living more normally. This is a large part of the 'work to live' element of the lifestyle. Katherine has a master list of provisions that should be on the boat, this she uses as a checklist from which to produce the shopping list. For example, a few days ago, she disappeared about 10.00 with Jess and Matt in the dingy with the trash we had collected since we were last able to get to dry land and re-appeared a couple of hours later with the dingy minus the trash but loaded with shopping ($253 worth). With some wine ($100) and a few more fresh things if we come across them ($50) then this will probably see us through now until we come back to the UK mid Feb, about a months worth. Last week on the way into the mooring field we stopped at the fuel dock and took on 95 gallons of water, 32 gallons of diesel and 5 gallons of petrol (for the dinghy) ($137 worth), again about a month's worth of fuel. A couple of weeks ago we had to take one of the propane tanks to be refilled ($20). Whilst well offshore (and following the maritime disposal rules) we pumped out the waste tanks. Whilst in the mooring field they get pumped out once per week as part of the charge ($100 per week). Anchoring is free so we expect we would only pay this infrequently.

SAILING - This is a gradual improvement really as we already have a fair bit of practice with this. The tricks we have learned are not to put too much sail up, how to trim the sails for comfort and to sail the boat as upright as possible. Handling the anchoring is again just a constant improvement though we need to get to grips with a Bahamian Moor (using two anchors). Handling under power and on and off docks and mooring balls we continue to practice though we have picked up a mooring ball twice in the last few weeks at the first attempt!! Except for the transmission failure there has been no docking incidents at fuel docks, bridges, etc., and we have dragged an anchor but not run aground to the extent we couldn't get ourselves off. The recent acquisition of achart plotter has made navigation and piloting very easy.

ENGINEERING - The boat requires a lot of attention though this I am getting better as we get the bugs out of it. We have just the HF Radio and Sailmail to sort now. To date we have changed the antennae tuning unit and most of the cabling. There has been some improvement but we need some more yet I think. I expect we will have to get a new one in the end and they are $1500. We are also thinking seriously about a cockpit enclosure which is a comfort thing really, giving us the ability to get out of the wind and rain but still be outside. I guess it's like a conservatory!!

SHAKEDOWN CRUISE - Although we didn't set off to have a shakedown cruise (a period of cruising followed by a period of changing/improving the boat and equipment and the way we do things) I think that is in effect what we have been doing for the last few weeks, we just didn't realise it until now. Here is a list of the main things we seem to have identified we need to change:

ON THE BOAT - We had done much of this since we bought the boat in 2006, there is a huge list elsewhere on the blog but essentially we had got the major systems working e.g. propulsion, electrical, plumbing, refrigeration and added some new stuff e.g. Chartplotter. With the benefit of using the boat the things we 'missed' were:

Radio: This is just about OK for voice and weather fax (weather charts transmitted as faxes which the HF Radio and Modem send to the computer which then displays them) it cannot handle the sail mail (e-mail). Yesterday we spent about an hour with the Sailmail people (they were great) and concluded that the radio, which is probably 20 years old, is past it. We are in the process of ordering a new one.

Anchoring and Anchors: Reflection on the dragging anchor incident has highlighted the following learning:
- Assume the anchor will drag so anchor where there is some room to recover before running into anything
- The risk of dragging is greater where the wind or the tide turns the boat for the first couple of times. I think this is what happened to us, the anchor was set but then unset itself and didn't reset.
- Anchor where you know the bottom to be good, if it says rky (rocky) on the chart then there are probably rocks on the bottom which will make the anchor likely to catch on them and more likely to drag!!
- Fortunately we were prepared so handled the incident pretty well

Ovefr the course of the past few weeks we have reflected on the anchors we have. We have a good sized Bruce which, when properly set in good holding looks like it will hold us in all but the worst conditions and we have a large Danforth which we had assumed we would use as a second anchor where we needed it (tight spot and/or significant tidal currents) and a storm anchor. Before Christmas we were going to use it as a second anchor because we were in a tight spot. I had never taken it off its mountings before and when I did I discovered it is VERY heavy (made from steel rather than the usual aluminum), good for a storm anchor but not good for a second anchor because there is no way that it can be used without a windlass. We have concluded we need an additional Danforth Anchor which weighs much less and can be used as the second anchor retaining the current Danforth as the storm one.

Cockpit Enclosure: The boat has a Bimini which covers the cockpit and keeps much of the sun off you whilst in the cockpit but offers no protection from the breeze. On days like today that makes it too cold to sit up there. We have had a guy out to price the modifications required to the Bimini to make an enclosure and expect to have this done whilst we are in the UK. This will make a huge difference

Compass in the Master Cabin: The anchor dragging incident has made us more conscious of having to monitor the position of the boat, the first sign of the anchor dragging is the boat swinging side on to the wind. This happens before the anchor alarm goes off which only happens once the boat has moved a hundred feet or so. Boats swing about at anchor in a stiff breeze anyway by up to 45 degrees to the wind, much more than this and it may be because the anchor is dragging. When you are lying in bed at night you can hear the wind and you can feel the boat swinging, but you have no visual reference you cannot tell whether this is just the normal swinging or whether it is the start of the anchor dragging. The answer seems to be a compass on the ceiling of the master cabin where we sleep so you can easily check whether the boat is pointing in the direction it should be or if it is not without getting out of bed to do it.

APPROACH TO SAILING - The weather here in the Keys at this time of the year is changeable. Over Christmas and New Year it was nearly 80 during the day and 70 at night and the winds were typically in the 10-15 knot range, pretty much perfect. Over the past week and in the couple of weeks before Christmas it has been closer to 70 in the day and less than 60 at night and for much of the time the winds have been in the North (cold) and over 20 knots. I expect it would have been slightly better in the Bahamas and next month and certainly in March it will improve. Although we should have known this and therefore expected and planned for it we did not. The result is that our expectations of when, where and how we would sail have been somewhat different to the way things have worked out. We need to expect to spend sometimes days where the wind is too high for comfortable sailing and/or in the wrong direction, and the weather too cold to sit in the sun all day. The extent to which you can go where you want, when you want and do what you want is significantly less than I had expected and this has taken some adjustment on my part.

COMMUNICATIONS - We have a whole range of communications kit with us ranging from mobile phones, internet capable machines and radios. That our HF is not quite right has been a pain and would be a show stopper if we don't sort it out. In the Bahamas and beyond it is really the only reliable source of weather information and affordable e-mail so it needs to be fixed. Mobile technology is wonderful but our UK mobile phone bills are too high so we need to find ways of reducing the use of these. The wi-fi antennae we have on the boat to try to increase the range at which we can get internet access has had limited success and we need to experiment with this as I think it might be that putting the antennae in the middle of a whole load of steel wires which make up the rigging may be the problem. Perhaps we need to try to put it lower but further away from the rigging

LIVING ABOARD - This is settling down nicely. Once you get into the rhythm (provisioning, maintenance, laundry, showers, cooking, etc.) then whilst the simple act of living requires much more work than it does on shore it is a pleasant way of life. There is plenty of time to read, blog and do other things). This and the rest of the activities above (sailing and looking after the boat) seem set to take less and less time and energy making more available for some new things like fishing, snorkeling, exploring, etc., etc.

FUTURE PLANS - We seem to be taking to the life of 'adventuring loafers' despite the differences between what we thought we were getting into and how it is shaping up in reality. I think we have the means to do it and we are going to give it a try over the next 12 months or so.