**I am having difficulty with wordpress the last two weeks, with both photos and uploads. Apologies for this post being out of order, late, and possibly duplicated.
We are initiated into passage making. We have survived going around Hatteras, Diamond Shoals, and Cape Lookout with its shoals. For Chris and I, this is a trip that we won’t make again. Our crew Amanda has been around once before and her experiences were vastly different – she says she would go around again.
The day started off great – a wonderful albeit frigid sendoff with Amanda’s family waving goodbye to us from the docks. Out into the river, and we dodged a long line of crab pots to get out into the bay (really, who lays their pots out in the channel?!?). The bay was chilly, we were excited, and we had no idea what awaited us after passing out of the bay and into the Atlantic. But we got the sails up! And down, but they were up for a bit!
Our plan was to put the sails up again after getting out into the ocean. And we tried. Gosh did we try. But the wind was coming right off our back, alternating side of the boat. That would leaving us unintentionally gybing over and over, and we don’t want to do that. And the winds were too strong to use our other head sails. Night was approaching, so we elected to drop the sails and motor overnight. This is when the fun started. Our starboard engine wouldn’t go over 2100 rpm, and port over 2300. The max rpm’s of these engines should be around 2800-3200. In neutral they go to 3100 and 3000. So they aren’t pulling expected rpm’s under load. They aren’t overheating at least!! Much angst, a consultation with our favorite mechanic via WhatsApp, and we are thinking maybe it’s fuel related. Versus the throttles. Start night watches. And an alarm goes off – our port engine tachometer dropped to zero and the alarm is screeching. Off goes the port engine.
Saturday morning dawns – it’s still pretty. We aren’t making the needed speed with only one engine and wind angles & speed incompatible for our sail setup. We see a HUGE school of large brown fish (Cobia?), and we ended up traveling right through them! So cool.
Chris fixes the port engine. Turns out an electrical connection had been knocked loose on the engine and needed to be reattached. Whew. But the rpm issue continues. And the seas are getting rougher. And rougher. We are taking 3 hour shifts due to the cold weather. Don’t want anyone to get too chilled. Lily our dog is staying next to the helm, refusing to leave the side of the person navigating.
I reach out to a monohull sailing behind us to see if they are ok – our radar makes it appear as though they are intermittently turning around – wonder if they are adjusting sails? They aren’t, but rather they are struggling with the rough seas and have drastically reduced their speed to 3 knots – which is what we are making at this point – because one of their children is so seasick. In the morning, they radio over to see if we survived that ‘$#¡+’ night intact – what all has been broken, they want to know. So kind of them to check back in. The seas stay huge with wind gusts of 30+ knots. All of us are nauseated despite taking our seasickness medications, and one person did end up vomiting. It seems to take forever to get to cape lookout. We know we’re in the Gulf Stream because the water temperature has increased form 58° to 71° – so the current is working against us – but we can’t safely get out of it since we have to pass around the cape lookout shoals (shifting sands make depth uncertain around these capes). So we power on.
We arrive in Beaufort about 1:30, 54 hours after we left. Anchored across from the Beaufort docks. We are dog tired, exhausted. And there is so much cleaning to do. Assess what is broken. We shower, put the dingy down, walk the dog, take her back to the boat, and walk to get dinner. No Name Pizza for the win. We return to Two Fish and absolutely crash. Here’s hoping the anchor holds. Good night.
