Althea’s Logbook: Leg 2 Recap

Cara, Brad, Buster Pike and Garrett Carlson left St. George Bermuda at 0715 on Tuesday the 7th, entered Pillsbury Sound at 0330 and picked up a mooring in the harbor of Francis Bay, Saint John at 0430 on Sunday November 12th.
• Total Miles: 848 nm
• Elapsed time from dock to mooring: 4 days, 21 hours 15 minutes
• Average speed: 7.12 knots
• Motoring hours through the High Pressure: 38.25 hours
• Gallons used: 42.5 gallons (1.11 GPH)
• Dinners: Chicken Burritos, Mahi Mahi, Fried Chicken and noodles, Beef Burritos, Lasagne!
• High wind speed: 29 knots
• Low wind speed: 3 knots
• High boatspeed: 9.4 knots (Garrett!)
• Critters seen, Dolphins, variety of seabirds, Mahi Mahi, Flying Fish, Turtle.
• Scariest Jetsam seen: A drifting buoy with about 100 yards of netting floating off of it! That would have been very scary to hit. (especially at night!)
• Weirdest encounter (but nice): We got a middle of the night call on the VHF from a fellow traveler crossing our track as they were heading to Antigua (we think). This is a normal occurrence BTW. Folks checking in with each other on the VHF just to chat and compare conditions, forecasts etc. This encounter was a little different though. After we got called on VHF 16, We switched from 16 to a working channel. We exchanged the normal pleasantries and then the gentleman on the radio said: “I saw Althea on the AIS and I had seen your Instagram post that you had Ken Read on your trip from Newport to Bermuda. Just wanted to reach out to you and tell you that I thought it was really cool that you had Ken Read on board”. Love my brother and all that, but I think I sprained my eyeballs rolling them back in my head….

Overall, it was a wonderful (although Cara and I thought it was pretty confused wave action) trip. Buster and Garrett have done this trip a bunch and they said the sailing was some of the best and that the wave action was a little confused.

After motor sailing and broad reaching on and off for the first 2 days, the last 3 were just beautiful 12-22 knot trade winds on a port tack beam reach. We worked hard to keep our course to the east of the Rhumb line so when the trades came in, we would have a better reaching angle for those last 500 miles. (If we got west of the rhumb line, there was a chance of having a very tight reaching angle which would have been far less comfortable!)

Fish on! 

On the morning of Day 3, we caught a Mahi Mahi with our hand line with teaser and cedar plug! Garrett and I cleaned the filets and Buster did a wonderful prep with a bit of olive oil, a touch of garlic and some Italian seasonings. It was just the best fish any of us had ever tasted!

To keep things interesting, there were plenty of squalls with torrential rain and winds that would go into the mid and upper 20s as they passed us. Lots of good maneuvering was done by our squad to dodge most of them, but a few gullywashers made it to the boat for a good fresh water rinse.

Cracks in the Armor…  

Breakages and jury rigging  things (fixing at sea) are part of boating and although nothing of note broke on leg 1, there were a few things that broke, or were breaking on leg 2.

After the first day of trade wind sailing, (Thursday afternoon) I was up doing a check of everything on the bow and at the mast prior to sundown. I noticed that a crack in the gooseneck had appeared. A touch alarming fr

ankly as we were now 350 miles from Bermuda and 500 from the Lesser Antilles…. We assessed the crack and took photos and made marks on the welds with a sharpie so we could see if the cracks were getting bigger. We also sailed that evening (it was quite moderate) in a way to not over load the mainsail.

BANG!

On Friday morning, Day 3, we bore off to do a sail change from the staysail to the big genoa and due to a loss of return pressure in the hydraulic vang cylinder, the piston on the vang compressed all the way in and then completely shock loaded up to the point where the hydraulic pressure limited the vang from going up a

ny farther. The violence of that shock load sheered off both ears (welds) of the vang bale from the mast. Itwas a loud bang! The good news was that although we sheered the boom vang fitting off, the cracks did not grow on the boom gooseneck. Whew….

So first on the job list was taking the hydraulic vang off completely. Cara and Buster tackled that. Without the hydraulic vang to control the boom, I rigged up a a bridle system to completely and solidly control the boom angle and used the spinnaker halyard as a topping lift for when we needed to reef and to keep the boom from moving on the vertical plane. The boom was absolutely locked in. In order to ease and trim the mainsail, it was a two (sometimes three) line adjustment so the gooseneck would stay stable in the horizontal plane and would have no ability to move up and down or have any slack to unload and load (shock load on a wave or if you luffed the sail etc). The bridle was comprised of the main sheet on one side and a “preventer” out to the rail.

With this rig, we sailed with one reef in the mainsail and everyone did a great job of managing the boom/mainsheet/preventer/topping lift controls. I was a bit manic (#onbrand) about it and for those who have sailed with me, you know how I can get!! Thanks to B, C and G for putting up with my somewhat psychotic attention to sailtrim detail!So, we nursed the fine yacht Althea through the final 3 days of 14-23 knots with squalls of 30 ish knots. Really appreciate what great sailors we had to make sure the main boom stayed “locked” in place.The cracks never got worse.

Spectacular Sailing

The last 48 hours was really great sailing. 18-23 knots just aft of the beam while dodging squalls (The new B&G radar was incredible at reading the squalls!) Althea was just ripping along averaging 8 knots through the water with the staysail and a reefed main. Super fun sailing, gorgeous sunsets and great company! We all relished the last several hours we had at sea before making landfall.

Sunday November 12
• We made landfall at Jost van Dyke at 0330 on Sunday AM.
• Got to a mooring in Saint John (Francis Bay) at 4:30 AM Sunday. We used the ROAM app to check in with USVI customs. What a game changer that app is! Super-efficient and quite easy to check in to US ports.
After a giant breakfast of corned beef hash and eggs we went from Francis Bay to Red Hook. We were fueled and watered by 12:15. We then powered over to Cowet Bay to a mooring at St Thomas YC. Once here, we launched the dinghy, swam, ate lunch, swam again and then tackled the gooseneck and vang bale situation. We took the boom and mainsail off and miraculously Garrett got all the machine screws out!

Monday November 13.
The Boys left today. Buster and Garrett were fantastic team members and a huge help. Their help, advice, knowledge and humor made this daunting trip so much fun! Cara and I are forever indebted to them for their help.
We had such wonderful help on both legs! Kenny, Melissa, Garrett and Buster. Dream team!

Today was a huge repair day. We sourced a welder and also The Rigging Company (ex Island Rigging and Hydraulics) who could work on our hydraulic vang cylinder. We also tracked down a needed Yanmar part from Offshore Marine, a Yanmar dealer, and they fortunately had a transmission dipstick in stock!! We are so Incredibly fortunate to have connections down here for names of some good people who do good work. Ben Beer, Nick Bailey and Kevin Gregory were a great help connecting us with the folks at The Rigging Company and AMP Metal Fabricators.

In 6 hours today, we had the 2 stainless pieces refabricated and welded and the hydraulic cylinder fixed. Cara stayed on the boat and prepped the mast to rebed the gooseneck and vang bail, sorted out storing the empty diesel jugs, and de salted the boat! Major feat there!!!

A huge thank you to our team and also Nick Bailey, (thumb yachter, former owner of the North loft here and Newporter in the summer!) who drove me from shop to shop to shop all day.

From Compromised to Repaired…  

In just over 2 days we went from being pretty compromised with 3 legit fixes to tackle to accomplishing all fixes with some really fine folks here in St. Thomas!
Now having a cerveza sitting on the mooring off of St. Thomas YC. Life is good.

Althea is powered by: North Sails Apparel, (Found at Team One Newport!), North Sails, PredictWind, The Bitter End Yacht Club, OldPort Marine Services, Sail Newport, Newport Rigging Group and Global BSI. Althea’s Crew are proud members of the New York Yacht Club, Ida Lewis Yacht Club, Sail Newport and the FWCC!