The blog had been quiet for a few weeks, mostly because we have been SO busy preparing for and making our longest passage of this journey 1600 non-stop miles from Hampton, VA to Antigua. My job was to prepare the boat, Roseann did most of the provisioning (aka grocery shopping) and was our “medical officer” so took care of the medicines and supplies we might need.
We left Hampton, VA on Tuesday morning November 4th, and arrived safely in Antigua very early (2AM) on Saturday November 15th. Future posts will detail the passage itself. We were not alone out there by any means, we took part in the Salty Dawg Caribbean Rally, nearly 80 boats that made the trek from Hampton to Antigua, some with a stop in Bermuda.
The picture above is a map of our track from Hampton to Antigua. About 8 of the 11 days of passage, we were officially “out of helicopter range” meaning if anything serious happened aboard we needed to be prepared to handle it ourselves as a proper medical facility could have been 2-3 days away. I say officially out of range, only because sometimes – as was the case with a boat (not part of the rally group) that sank a couple hundred miles from us early in the trip, the helicopters can land on Navy or Coast Guard ships to refuel to extend their range. There are also no grocery stores out there so we needed food for five of us, we brought two “crew” members with us, for at least 14 days, ideally for 18 days. I will let Roseann detail the hoops she went through for the medical side, and the massive amount of supplies we needed to buy, get on board and find places to stow!
Boats always have a long list of things that need to be fixed or maintained, there are lots of systems onboard to make our lives comfortable. I had focused much of my attention to maintenance over the summer, but as we got closer I spent most of my free time going over the mast, rigging, sails and safety systems very closely as we needed to make sure we were in the best condition possible. We also had some maintenace items (oil changes etc.) that needed to wait until we got closer to our departure date.
About a week before our planned departure of November 1st (or the first weather window after) we arrived in Hampton. That week was filled with more provisioning, more inspections, training the crew where equipment was and how to use it, and events put on by the Salty Dawgs. Events ranged from happy hours to get to know fellow participants to daily weather briefings by the weather router, and seminars on storm tactics, heavy weather sailing, resource management, offshore fishing, and much more.
In early fall we posted a message to the Salty Dawgs website looking for an experienced couple who would be willing to join us on this passage. Roseann and I have done shorter trips with just one other person and the three hour on six hour off watch rotation gets tiring after a few days, so we wanted to have a fourth crew to shorten watches and/or extend off watch time. Within three hours of posting the request we had five or six responses, by the time I went to bed that night a few hours later we had another four or five, by the next morning we had another ten to fifteen! I think in all we had about 120 applicants. After a few Zoom/FaceTime calls we asked a couple who had been cruising for several years to join us, Mindy and Reinhart, and we got along great and we learned a lot from them. Mindy was also heavily involved in the Rally as the coordinator of the Shoreside support team so we also had all the wisdom of her experience from past rallies and the types of issues that can happen.
One of the many benefits we received from joining the rally was the support of having a weather router. The rally contracted with Chris Parker (mwxc.com), who is a former cruiser himself and works with boats of all descriptions to plan safe offshore or near-shore travels. Right from our first official briefing on the Monday before departure (November 1st was on Saturday) Chris was thinking that a Tuesday (Nov 4th) or Wednesday (Nov 5th) departure was likely our best option, and that departing on the 31st (Friday) or Saturday AM was highly likely to encounter gale force winds and heavy squalls (thunderstorms). The next briefing on Wednesday still favored Tuesday/Wednesday, but was slightly better outlook for Friday. On Friday morning, we had another briefing. Before that call I was truly in the 50/50 camp of leaving that afternoon or waiting until Tuesday. After the call, we made the decision to wait for Tuesday as the weather leaving Friday looked worse than a couple days prior. The downside of the Tuesday departure was a high probability of very light winds near the end of the trip.
We were glad we waited for a Tuesday departure. The boats that left on Friday/Saturday AM saw 40+ mph winds and severe thunderstorms on the second night, several boats suffered major damage, at least two turned to return back. Our weather wasn’t perfect either but I will detail that in the next post!