April 1, 2020 - April Fool

April 1, 2020 - What were we thinking? 

8:00 am-  Left Black Rock Sound. 

Wasn’t sure wether to leave since we knew it would be a bumpy ride. I think Steve senses how I want to move on, so the anchor was lifted and off we went heading to Hatchet Bay. 

We are doing 7.2 knots with 20 kn of winds gusting to 24 kn on the beam with just the head sail up. 

10:30 am- The wind picked up and so did the waves. We have a brass bell in our galley and it rarely gets rung except for today.  The waves were 6 to 8 ft at 25 ft apart and the water depth was only 25 ft. The boat was pounding. At one time, Steve asked me to to take over while he went down below. All of a sudden the auto helm came off and the boat started turning in the opposite direction.   I was proud of myself when I took control before Steve came back up wondering what happened. 

12:30 pm-  I couldn’t believe it when Steve pointed out that a dolphin was approaching our boat. It was so cool. He looked like a torpedo coming straight to our boat. I never knew they would still be out in those high waves. 

We kept reefing the sail as the wind gusted up to 30 kn

We kept reefing the sail as the wind gusted up to 30 kn. As the wind increased we decided to take in the sail. As we decided to take in the sail, a line squall came thru with torrential rain with 40 + knot winds for approximately 10 minutes. Our main concern was a freighter was anchored off our starboard quarter and we had our motor on and we were only maintaining our position at 2800 rpm which normally gives us 6 kn of speed. I couldn’t see anything let alone the freighter. Steve was able to see it on the chat plotter. When the visibility came back it was 500 yards behind us. We held our position but the current had moved us back approximately 200 yards. 

The wind had shifted north and now we had to motor the rest of the way and Steve got a great workout steering into the waves and was a wet rag. 

1:45 pm The challenge was now getting in through the entrance of Hatchet Bay with 25 knot northerly wind a following sea and a 90 ft passage. Captain Steve was successful. Got inside, dropped a hook, cleaned the stuff that got thrown around the boat and cracked a couple of beers. 

This is the 90 ft passage we had to come into during the high winds. 
2:00 pm- Arived at Hatchet Bay and we covered 35.82 nm.  Nicely calm in here. 

Here is a video before it got really rough 

Relax time now.