Life at Sea on Nana Maria

Our first day at sea was Friday. Winds were light and variable so almost all the boats spent the day motoring out of the Chesapeake Bay instead of sailing out of it. Norfolk is a very high traffic area for ships. Big tankers come into the are and wait for a pilot to escort them up the bay to their final destinations. There also plenty of tugs moving vessels as well as a huge fleet of Navy Warships and the like. As we were trying to leave the bay, one of these warships started down the channel. It was an aircraft carrier with a plane on its deck. It was being escorted by a helicopter. The helicopter kept buzzing the fleet to make sure we were not posing a threat. We waited for the warship to pass so Howard and Rodney could get a good look and some pics. It was HUGE.

In this race, you can run your engines, but there is a penalty. They add on 1 hour to your time for every hour you run your engine. So our rule of thumb is this: If one hour of engine time gets us further than 2 hours of sailing time, we run the engine. Up until Friday night, the fastest we could get the boat to sail was 3 knots so turned on the engine. By about 7pm, the wind picked up, we were singing along at 8-9knots in 17-20knots of wind. Not too shabby!

This race is “handicapped” also. Each boat has a certain number of hours that will be deducted from its time. The ratings come from the size and shape of the boat as well as the size and shape of the sails each ship is equipped with One of the fastest boats is called 1700Somewhere, a Macgregor 65 just like our Sunsets. 1700Somewhere will only have about 5 hours deducted from his final time. We will have about 23 hours deducted. Some of the smaller boats will have a much more than that deducted. This is how they even the playing field. Additionally, the Racing Fleet is broken up into 3 divisions. There is an overall winner as well as a winner for each division. We are in Division 2 and we are one of the fastest boats in that division. So if you are tracking our progress on www.Carib1500.com, keep in mind that the boats that are further south may have more engine hours or a smaller handicap so they still may not win for their divisions. (That’s my way of saying—No matter how bad it looks, we are not losing!!)

Janel is a wonderful chef and has prepared and frozen several lovely meals that we can eat on the crossing. Friday night, was her fabulous homemade Lasagna for dinner. The sails were set for the evening and it was a lovely dinner followed by a beautiful sunset. Howard and I covered the Midnight to 4M shift. It was very precarious because a thick fog settled in around 10pm. We could not see a thing. Thank goodness we have radar to keep an eye on things. The fog was fully lifted by the end of shift at 4am.

By daybreak we were well into the Gulfstream with its choppy waves, Saturday’s wind lasted all the way into the night and we spent the day plowing through the stream. Being in the Stream certainly makes things uncomfortable. The boat is tossed about and you have to hang on to do anything. The Stream runs up the coast of the US and then veers off to Europe. It carries very warm water with it. We watched water temperatures jump from 68 to 82 in a matter of a few hoursl By the end of Saturday, we were out of the Gulfstream, thank goodness. The confused and choppy seas not only contribute to seasickness but also make it hard to do the simplest tasks.

On Saturday. Marianne and I both came down with the 24hour flu that has been going around the fleet. Marianne felt it coming on all day Saturday and I joined her in her misery on Saturday night. We think Howard may have it too, or he has another bad case of seasickness. (We may not have found the right combination of drugs to keep his seasickness under control) With 3 crew members down and out, the “weak” cold front that the weather folks had been predicting blew through. It slammed with us with sustained winds at 30knots, gusts of 45knots, rain and 10’ seas. The winds were so strong that they sheared the foam off of the violently breaking waves. Sails were reefed in and out all night in an attempt to keep control of the boat. Unfortunately, Marianne and I were useless. I spent the evening tucked into the bottom berth with the lee cloth in place. (A lee cloth is a piece canvas that is strung up across the entrance to your bunk so you don’t get pitched out of bed. Believe me, it was a necessary piece of equipment last night.) Marianne wedged herself across the V-berth in an attempt to stay still. At times, I expect that she was airborne a couple times through the night as the boat lurched and slammed into the oncoming waves. When a wave crashes into the boat just right, it sounds like gunshots. Everyone was up all night and totally exhausted by daybreak. Even into the morning, we would watch the squalls gather on the radar screen as the proceeded to hammer us. Finally, the weather calmed down around 7am on Sunday.

Sunday looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day. Just don’t know if we’ll have wind.

Take care all.
Kelly & Howard on NanaMaria