4.30.2022 - 5.6.2022 Our Second Passage (USVI to Florida)

Day 1

Prior to departure we were able to get our new Starlink satellite setup! We repurposed the pole that held our wind generator to be the mount for the satellite.

We raised anchor from Druif Bay at 9:00am EST and raised the sails. The seas remained calm and we didn’t have much wind throughout the day so we ended up motor sailing (having the sails up along with one engine) with the port engine; without the engine, we were doing 5-6 knots/hr and with the engine we got up to 7-10 knots/hr. It was also rainy on/off throughout the day and our temporary enclosure worked well to offer some protection. Due to the rain, the weather remained cloudy/overcast. We split time up at the helm and inside the salon at the navigation station. We had Starlink roaming coverage almost all the way through Puerto Rico. Due to the overcast skies, we didn’t really get to see sunset or moonrise on our first night watch.

At the end of 24 hours, we sailed 163.5NM with an average of 6.8knot/hr speed.

Day 2

The weather remained rainy on/off with calm seas and cloudy/overcast skies. Due to this, we spent the majority of the day inside lounging, snacking, and watching downloaded shows/movies. We ended up turning on the generator for a couple of hours to help with power since our solar was only doing about 300 watts due to no sun. The wind picked up some today and we tried a new sail configuration, wing on wing. This is where the headsail is facing one direction and the mail sail faces another (see below example).

The day was pretty uneventful, and we were able to pass Puerto Rico. Around 3:30am on my night watch. The wind suddenly changed and the sails were slapping pretty loud. We had to go up to the helm and readjust the sails with our red-light filters, which are used to minimize disruption of your night vision. In the distance (about 8-10NM away) on the starboard side, there was a mild to moderate lighting storm we could see lighting up the sky/clouds – there was no lighting that touched down on the water, but out of precaution, we moved one of our tablets into the microwave for protection - if we got struck by lightning, all of our electronics could be affected; having a backup electronic is essential for our route planning and satellite communication.

At the end of 48 hours, we sailed an additional 147.5NM (311NM total) with an average of 6.1knot/hr speed.

Day 3

We started off the morning with an amazing dolphin encounter!! Around 8:15am, Mike saw a splash from the helm and then a dorsal fin – two wild dolphins joined us and were swimming along the starboard hull and then up to the bow! They were rolling/spinning right at the surface of the water, jumping, and overall acting very curious and playful!

The weather conditions have stayed constant – calm seas, overcast/cloudy days, and minimal wind. We again ended up motor sailing this time with the starboard engine. We have stayed pretty much on our route and remained about 20NM north of the coast of the Dominican Republic. In the afternoon, the wind picked up so we were able to use the wing on wing sail configuration again.

During our night watch, we crossed over into Haiti waters. Our downwind speed held through the morning and we pretty much were surfing with the waves. For the first time on passage, the clouds lifted and we were able to see the stars and each of us saw shooting stars! There was also a period where bioluminescence could be seen on the water surface along the port hull. With the clouds gone, we also were able to see our first sunrise of the passage.

At the end of 72 hours, we sailed an additional 162NM (473NM total) with an average of 6.8knot/hr speed.

Day 4

We started the morning sailing beyond the coast of Haiti and we came upon Great Inagua Island, one of the islands in the Bahamas, mid-morning. We decided to try our luck at fishing, so Mike put out two lines (one over each hull’s sugar scoop). Around 1pm, we had another dolphin encounter right at the bow of the boat!!! This time, there was a pod of 8-10 dolphins that includes adults and babies and they were incredibly curious and playful! They were close enough that we could hear them chirping, they were consistently rolling in the water to look at us, and two of them jumped clear out of the water!

Later in the afternoon, both are fishing lines were hooked with what we think are mahi fish! It took us awhile to get them reeled in because a couple of times the lines got crossed and we had to untangle, and they were also very feisty. We got them both reeled in about 10-12 feet from the port sugar scoop when one of them got loose – when we got the lure in, on of the hooks was completely broken off. We were able to get the second reeled in and bring the mahi onboard – we estimate that is was 15-20 pounds. Once we got the lure unhooked, we released the fish back into the ocean because 1) we didn’t really think about what to do if we actually caught a fish because we haven’t any of our previous attempts, and 2) we don’t have adequate fileting supplies.

Around 6pm, we started our approach along the northeast, coast of Cuba. So far, our route has us about 40-50NM north of our third waypoint. We’re on track to enter the Old Bahama Channel, which is one of the most common/popular routes going from Florida to the Caribbean and vice versa.

At the end of 96 hours, we sailed an additional 156.5NM (629.5NM total) with an average of 6.5knot/hr speed.

Day 5

Today was a pretty uneventful day at sea – the day was sunny, seas were very calm, and we had wind for about half the day, then had to start the port engine. We took advantage of the calm by having some lounging and relaxing in the indoor salon – we watched downloaded shows, played card games, and again put out a fishing line but didn’t have any luck.

We ended up updating our route to better factor in the Gulf Stream by adding two more waypoints between our original third waypoint and our final destination – we reached the third waypoint right on schedule at 2am. The additional waypoints better factor in the timing of when we start to sail north towards the Gulf Stream. Due to our updated route, we also updated our land support that we’ll start to include coordinates with our daily updates over satellite phone since we aren’t able to share the updated route.

At the end of 120 hours, we sailed an additional 163.5NM (793NM total) with an average of 6.8knot/hr speed

Day 6

At the end of 144 hours, we sailed an additional 173NM (966NM total) with an average of 7.2knot/hr speed

We started our morning with having to refill our diesel tanks with our Jerry cans. In addition to each engine’s diesel tank having a 65 gallon capacity, we had 40-50 additional gallons. Due to the weather and wind conditions, we ended up having to motor sail much more than anticipated. Also, because we have two engines, we were able to split using each of them to try to have equal hours of usage.

Around 1pm, we reached our next waypoint that was about ½ along the northern coast of Cuba - this was our signal for us to change our heading to start sailing north towards Florida. The seas remained flat all day and the weather forecast indicate no wind again tomorrow, which means we’re likely going to have to motor the remainder of our passage.

Day 7

Starting around 10:45am, we were within range to see the Miami skyline. In preparation for our re-entry to land, we took the following steps-

• Removed preventer lines from the head sail and mainsail

• Removed temporary enclosure that was attached to the hardtop

• Removed jacklines

• Brought down the sails

• Started reviewing our charts for depth and channel information

We decided to aim for Dinner Key Marina after a recommendation from our friends Brad and Jackie. There was a well-marked channel that would bring us right into the mooring field and anchorage. The standard channel markers are green and red and help direct you based on whether you are returning or leaving an area. Since we are returning to land/a port, we needed the red channel marker on our right side – this is remembered through the mnemonic “red-right-returning”. The entire area was relatively shallow water and we were able to anchor with ease.

At the end of our passage, we sailed 1016NM over 149 hours.

Passage Debrief

Overall, I think we were both more prepared and more relaxed than our first passage from Grenada to St. Thomas, USVI. I think the biggest differences were 1) we were more comfortable sailing (at least I was) and 2) we knew what to expect for a passage. We estimate that we did an additional 50-100 hours of sailing throughout the USVI (St. Thomas and St. John) and got more familiar with our sail configurations and making adjustments based on changes in wind pattern. We also had a better expectation of what the passage experience was going to be – we had entertainment (shows/movies and card games), meal planned and had extra snacks, and felt more comfortable splitting time between the helm and salon.

However, as we’re still new to sailing and cruising in general, I wanted to have a debrief with Mike about what went well and what we could do better for next time.

What went well-

• Like our first passage, we did a lot of prep work to ensure all our systems were serviced and safe prior to embarking.

• We didn’t encounter any dangerous weather so we planned a good weather window

• Our provisioning and meal prep was perfect. We didn’t run low or out of food options until the second to last day and didn’t feel like we needed to ration throughout to keep it that way.

• The last minute addition of installing Starlink gave us significantly more internet time at the beginning and end of our passage.

• Our night watches. This time around, we decided to do 4-hour shifts instead of 3-hour shifts. We set the night watch shifts as 6pm-10pm, 10pm-2am, and 2am-6am. This ended up working really well on an alternating schedule – during the day, we were both awake and were able to each nap for 1-2 hours depending on whoever had the first night watch shift. For example, on Day 1, Mike napped in the morning and I napped in the afternoon prior to my first watch shift; on Day 2, I napped in the morning and Mike napped in the afternoon prior to his first watch shift. It also allowed us to rotate between doing two night watches and one night watch every other day. It was pretty easy for us to stick to this alternating schedule, and we think it also made things seem more comfortable for Ollie being able to hang with us during the day and alternate sleeping with whoever wasn’t on watch.

What we can do better-

• We could’ve done a practice/mini passage to test out all our systems. Our final 2-3 weeks in St. Thomas was us at anchor and not sailing around. We briefly talked about sailing to Puerto Rico and staying for a couple days and embarking from there, but with our work schedules we couldn’t make it happen.

• The morning before we left, we couldn’t find Ollie’s grass patch. The grass patch is what we planned to use to potty train him on the boat, but he picked it up so quickly we didn’t really need it. We kept it to put in the outdoor salon area for while we are on passages so we didn’t have to go to the trampolines while underway. Thankfully the seas were calm enough to allow us to go upfront with him tethered to us, and we ended up finding the grass patch when we started fishing, but we should’ve looked for it sooner.

• We didn’t setup jacklines on the starboard side. This made it challenging to work with the head sail and mainsail preventer lines because we didn’t have a line to tether to.

• We ended up mis-calculating our fuel. We thought each of our engine tanks held 80 gallons for a total of 160 gallons. We have the capacity to hold an additional 60 gallons of fuel in our Jerry cans (we filled about 45 gallons of extra fuel in the cans). However, in checking through our maintenance log, each engine tank holds 65 gallons for a total of 130 gallons. This put us 30 gallons short of what we thought we had. This is important because in our passage planning, we wanted to have enough fuel to get to our destination in the event we couldn’t do any sailing. Running one engine at 2500rpm (which is recommended by the factory) burns 1.2gallons/hr. For a 7-day passage (168 hours), we wanted to have 201 gallons (which we had if our tanks were 80 gallons each) but ended up only having 175 gallons. Thankfully we didn’t need to motor the entire time, but this was a big oversight on our part.

• Having to “sail” on a schedule. There’s a saying in the sailing community that you can choose where to sail or when to sail, but not both. This is mostly due to the unpredictability of weather conditions and the need to be flexible as you never know what can happen during a passage. Since we’re both still working full-time, we have a schedule we need to somewhat keep. Over the 6 days, we ended up motor sailing a total of 80 hours – 48 hours on the port engine, 32 hours on the starboard engine. This was mostly due to there being minimal or no wind but also because we had to be back in Florida by 5.8.2022 to go back to work 5.9.2022.