A great (although a bit too stressful) crossing to Bermuda October 28-October 31, 2023

Newport to Bermuda. October 28-October 31

3 days, 10.5 hours. Avg Speed (for the straight line of 635 miles) 7.7 knots. Avg Speed for total miles sailed of 673 miles: 8.16 knots)

The departure: 

After a rousing sendoff from the MacGillivrays, Stookeys and daughter Becca from the dock at the Newport Yachting Center, and the Hiltons, Deutschs and Toppas who ushered us out of Narragansett Bay and the awesome DEM folks with their lights flashing and sirens blaring from Fort Adams, we were off to Bermuda. Ken Read, Melissa Santaniello, Cara and I set out on what was a tremendous sail to the “Onion Patch”. (See below mini blog posts from our tracker.) It was an unbelievably smooth and fun passage overall, although a bit stressful due to the impending low pressure system..  More on that below…

Saturday, Full Moon, Dolphins and a New Friend!

The first day and overnight was some of the nicest sailing I have done in 20 years. 100 degree wind angle, 15-17 knots and warm for late October. We had the big genoa with the full mainsail the staysail furled 30% to act like a genoa staysail. Dolphins were everywhere. We became a temporary home to an adorable little bird that hitched a ride with us for a few hours.  As the sun set on this amazing day, a full moon rose in a completely cloudless sky. The boat and crew were listening to tunes, had a meal of rotisserie chicken and egg noodles. We each had a cocktail (Bud Light for me! #onbrand) at dusk to commemorate the start of this first leg of our adventure.

Day 2 dawned just as beautifully as the prior night’s sunset had left us. The moon and the sun were both up for a couple hours. Just spectacular sailing!  We made just over 200 miles on that first day, averaging 8.4 knots! Flying! The new electronics installed (by our friends at Cay Electronics) after the lighting strike were getting fine tuned calibrated and our new autopilot (which we named Chandler in honor and memory of Matthew Perry.. so sad) was doing a fantastic job of sailing the boat at a consistent True Wind Angle. We had Egg and sausage roll ups for breakfast and were still flying along as we downloaded the new weather files… Hmmm… That is a new development?!

Ruh Ro… 

There was a new feature of a low pressure system developing on Tuesday afternoon evening near Bermuda that was becoming a real factor in our voyage.   It was a little disconcerting (alarming) as we analyzed the 2 main weather models mid morning on Sunday. Both models were in agreement that a low pressure system would form mid day to late afternoon on 10/31 and it would intensify in the evening and have legit circulation (tropical characteristics) by 11PM on the 31st.  After putting the weather files in our navigational program and creating new theoretical routing based on the boats performance data (polars), we determined that this cruise to Bermuda had just turned into a race against the clock. Whenever we would dip below 7.8 knots sailing, we would turn on the engine to get our speeds into the mid 8’s. More fuel burning, but the alternative was to not push and potentially be out in 30-40 knots for the last many many hours….

So we sailed to the gulf stream and as we crossed over the sea temp went from a very warm 74 degrees to a remarkable 86 degrees! We got a good push for an hour or two but then the vaunted gulf stream vanished on us. The ocean current model was very wrong for the next 24 hours and we found ourselves against current for a major part of the stream. Commanders weather (who we contracted for additional weather data besides what Kenny and I were using in Expedition) gave us a clue to go to a different model called the Mercator model. We are SO fortunate that we had bailed out of our original strategy as this new ocean model was far more accurate and were able to determine that the gulf stream feature called a cold eddy was within our reach to get a good push from. Boats that stayed on the original gulf stream forecast that were near us when we bailed out of that strategy went 4o some miles west of our (already west ish) track and they (some were 60 + footers) arrived nearly a day behind us and truly battered.

Pushing hard… 

Monday dawned very light but we were starting to (finally) get a push from the gulfstream. Our ETA’s were looking anywhere from 1630 to 2230 on the 31st and that was concerning. If the predicted 15-20 SW didn’t materialize today, we’d be in a world of hurt!

Power Reaching! 

Thankfully the breeze came up and we had a ripper of a day, evening and overnight on Monday and through till dawn on Tuesday! Great breeze good size waves, positive current and lots of smiles on Althea with the boat really well balanced in the sporty conditions.  We each drove about 2 hours at a time and it was really fun sailing.  We started with the big genoa and then as the breeze built to consistently over 18 knots, we furled up the genoa and unfurled our staysail (or solent or trinquette

depending on where you sail!).  I can’t tell you how fun a sail and how beautiful the conditions were. Sunny, warm, not to much spray on the deck and just ripping along between 8.6 and 10 knots for almost 12 HOURS! Cara had the top speed through the water at 9.93 knots and 11 knots over the ground. Sending it!!!

The last 70 miles…

But the pressure was still on. Overnight into Tuesday AM the breeze backed (shifted left) and moderated so that we had to start the engine to keep those average speeds up over 8. We knew that by noon on Tuesday that we would be motorsailing with just the mainsail up for the last 40 – 50 miles.  It was going to get slower, bumpier and wetter….  Sure enough, the waves got big, the breeze (only 13 knots) changed direction to right from Bermuda and we were in for a battle to get in by 7PM and beat the weather. Kenny did a great job of setting the boat up and I just can’t say enough about how our Yanmar engine performed. We kept over 7.2-7.4 at relatively low RPM in large nasty chop near the end. Thanks to Mark Preston  and Preston Marine as well as Mike Muessel and his fantastic team at Oldport Marine for servicing Althea’s engine prior to heading on our trip! We put a TON of hours on!

Approaching the “Onion Patch”

Bermuda isn’t a super “tall” island, but we finally saw the hills surrounding St. George around 5PM. At that point we knew (barring a breakage) we would be in St. George Harbor by 7:00 or 7:30 at the latest. We tucked in behind the reef for some flatter water and took the final starboard tack (motorsailing) towards Kitchen Shoals and Mills Breaker.  As we tacked back onto port and started navigating the somewhat complicated series of buoys marking the skinny harbor entrance, we could start taking a sigh of relief. It was blowing a solid 20 now and there were signs of squalls on the radar. We made it…

Some lessons learned…

We were racing the development of the low from day 2. We pushed really hard to get here prior to that thing spinning up. It was blowing 40 out there about 4 hours after we got on the anchor on Halloween night in St. George Harbor.

In the morning of Nov. 1 there were at least 12 ais signals 40-100 miles from Bermuda that left Newport or southern NE area the day we did (28th). We arrived at 1930 on October 31, spent the time with customs folks and then went out to anchor at around 2130. At around 2230 it started squalling up in earnest and by 0100 Nov 1 it was blowing in the mid 30s in the harbor and pouring rain in sheets. To say we hustled to get here to avoid being out in the ocean in that weather is an understatement..

It felt like a race. We learned / reconfirmed a few good lessons: 

1. Don’t treat the weather routing like the racing we do! Back off on the polar performance to 80% and if it’s iffy just delay a passage till the next window. Just because you “can” get there before the development of the low, doesn’t mean you should”
2. Bring more fuel than you think you aught to and then bring more. (Thanks Steve for the extra jug!)
3. Having a brother aboard that has sailed 2.5 laps around the planet and a ventured on a dozen or so ocean crossings is a bonus.
4. Cara’s abilities offshore are tremendous. Driving, sail trimming, organization of all food, water, etc and always thinking 3 steps ahead. She is a machine.
5. Re-confirmed that Current models of the Gulf Stream should never be taken as gospel
6. The atmospheric models are incredibly powerful tools and I am happy that I spent the time working on routing systems and developing good polars for the boat. We knew almost precisely when we would get in 2 days from Bermuda and when the worst of the weather was going to start.
7. We re-confirmed that Melissa is possibly the nicest person in the world and hilariously funny and a great offshore teammate!
8. Message to self. “This is a cruising adventure you idiot“! It shouldn’t be stressful!! (Referring to beating the storm into Bermuda)

But really, except the added stress of beating the storm, it was a blast. Kenny and Melissa were so much fun to have on this trip! We couldn’t have done it without their help and expertise!

More to follow….