11 May 1996 Titusville Marina, Florida
Glenys went off to a Flea Market in the morning, while I finished off a few little jobs. In the afternoon, we tidied up again! I’m trying to decipher the weather. It looks like there is a cold front coming down which will disrupt the nice SW airflow that we’ve had for the last week. We went for a bottle of wine or four with Bill and Jerry on “Miss Sis III” (USA) – they are setting off for a long cruise tomorrow. I’m jealous because we’re just about to start the final leg of ours!
12 May 1996 Titusville Marina, Florida
It was a miserable overcast day. The cold front has arrived. The forecast is for the front to stall and dissipate, with a high coming from the US coast. I’m not sure what the wind will do, but we are getting ready to leave the marina tomorrow. Brett went to church again with Daniel. The church sends a bus to pick people up from the local area. It sounds like the kids have a wild time fighting and throwing rice about – Brett loved it. I spent most of the day on admin working out our finances – we now only have the boat and £27K in cash and investments. (Easy come, easy go!)
13 May 1996 Titusville Marina, Florida
I got up early, picked up a weather fax and listened to the weather forecast. The front is due to dissipate Tuesday or Wednesday and the high should move east. We have ENE winds today and the forecast is for East winds for the next few days until the high moves far enough east to give us a more southerly air flow. Hurry up and wait.
I spent all day designing our “Boat Net” web site and designing some web pages. Glenys did a bit of school work (gasp!) and then took the boys to the park. I ended up working on web pages until after midnight!
14 May 1996 Titusville Marina, Florida
The forecast is still for East winds, so we are on standby again today. We hope to leave the Marina tomorrow and sail on Thursday, 16th. We did school work in the morning.
In the afternoon, I went up the mast and removed the wind instrument sensor – the wind vane for the direction indicator has finally fallen off. I tried to make a replacement out of Formica, but the sheets I’ve got on board have warped. It took me about an hour to hit on the idea of using a PADI underwater slate as the vane - necessity is the mother of all invention...
Glenys has started to read about the Internet. She’s finding it a bit “dry”. I spent the evening working on Boat Net web pages. In the late afternoon a strong 20-25 knot ENE wind built up – I don’t think we’ll be leaving tomorrow. We foolishly opened a 1½ litre bottle of wine, to drown our sorrows!
15 May 1996 Titusville Marina, Florida
The wind dropped overnight and swung more southerly. The forecast is still for ENE winds until Friday, so we decided to stay yet another day. We did school work in the morning. Brett did some fishing with a small net and caught some little sea horses! They were only about ½” long and were cute little dudes. We were both feeling a little tender, so Glenys went to Burger King to buy us some stodge for lunch. In the afternoon, I played with Internet web pages while Glenys went for a walkabout.
16 May 1996 Titusville Marina, Florida
I listened to the weather – not ideal with ESE 10-15 but much better. I walked to the Post Office and the supermarket, Glenys filled the water tanks, I put the wind instruments back up the mast and we filled up with diesel. We paid our $450 marina bill and went out to anchor – yahoo! I dived and cleaned the propellor and hull – an odious job with only 1ft visibility. We spent the rest of the day tidying up and stowing gear. We had a wonderful evening at anchor!
17 May 1996 Titusville Marina to St Georges Harbour, Bermuda (Day 1)
There was a weird rumbling noise coming through the hull as we went to bed. It stopped at about eleven pm – I suspect they were dredging somewhere to the south of us. I listened to the weather and there’s a high pressure ridge stretching from just north of us to Bermuda. The winds are ESE, south of ridge and S/SW, north of the ridge. The ridge is forecast to move south, so we plan to head up to 30°N, using the Gulf Stream, until we pick up reasonable SW winds.
We had a final tidy up, stowing bikes and things in the front cabin. We finally managed to lift the anchor at eleven o’clock and motored down the ICW (yawn!), past Cape Canaveral where we could just make out the shape of the launch pad from where a shuttle will blast off on Sunday. It was supposed to have gone on the 15th but has been delayed – a pity to miss it.
I went to the toilet just after we entered the Canaveral Barge Canal. I had just settled down when I heard the engine revs drop followed by a sickening lurch as we went aground – my expletive was appropriate! We soon freed ourselves and carried on along the rather pretty canal. We saw a guy floating on a lilo near the shore and I commented that it looks like alligator country to me. 400 metres later we saw …… an alligator!
We had to go through a big lock to exit the Intracoastal Waterway. I made a total mess of docking at the side of the lock and then fell in while trying to adjust a front mooring line – mortifying! We managed to get to sea without further major mishap (and wasn’t I glad to be out at sea!) We had a steady E-ESE 15 wind all afternoon and evening. We picked up a north-going current but decided to hedge our bets and sailed NE instead of north – besides, it was a beam reach and very pleasant.
18 May 1996 Titusville Marina to St Georges Harbour, Bermuda (Day 2)
Very dark night, but we managed to hold onto the wind until morning, when it dropped and veered to SW 5-10. We listened to the weather forecast, which said that the ridge was at 27°N and slowly moving south. We put up the twin poled out jibs and flopped along all day in 5-10 knot winds, but mercifully calm seas. We put the awning up and had a very restful day.
Glenys lost a bucket overboard while playing at sea water showers with the boys. We motored back for it, but missed on our first attempt and it was sinking when we tried again. Glenys forbade me to dive in after it!
I spent the afternoon starting a file of companies involved in sailing, so that we can create web pages for them when we get back to the UK.
At about six o’clock, the wind backed to S10-15, so we dropped the twin running sails and went off on a reach at a blistering 4 knots! Our domestic batteries must be ruined because they were down to 23.7V this morning even though we ran the engine for 7.9 hours yesterday. We decided to start turning the fridge off at night and only keep the log and wind instruments on. I’ll only switch the GPS on when I want a fix.
19 May 1996 Titusville Marina to St Georges Harbour, Bermuda (Day 3)
We had a very pleasant and fast reach all night – it was a very dark night with only about 3 ships. Near dawn we were buzzed by an aircraft – we assume US Coastguard – nice to know they are there! The wind stayed S but dropped to 10 knots during the morning. I went to bed at half past nine until just after midday. I find that the 11-2 and 5-8 watches are harder than the 8-11, 2-5 watches. I think it’s something to do with being woken up, in the dark, twice. Either that or I’m a lazy bugger!
After lunch, Glenys cut my hair and then we had a communal sea water shower on the front deck. We put the fishing line out, but had no success. I continued building up my file of sailing industry companies (yawn!) At dusk the wind was starting to drop and we had S 5-10 most of the night. We spotted another yacht so I tried to call it on CH16 but no luck. We had a much better run today, covering 119 miles. We’ve decided to keep south of 30°N for a few days, in case the wind comes from the east. We’ll have a better tack if we’re well south of Bermuda.
20 May 1996 Titusville Marina to St Georges Harbour, Bermuda (Day 4)
The wind steadied to S10 at about three o’clock in the morning and we slipped along at 4 knots. The other sailing yacht appeared on our starboard and behind us this morning. They were in front and on our starboard at dusk last night. We obviously overtook them, but didn’t see any lights – I reckon that they didn’t have any on – very dodgy! The trip so far has been very pleasant and we’ve skipped into a good routine – I’m enjoying it.
The forecast is that the high pressure ridge will be stationary at 25°N until Friday 24th so we have started to steer 080° directly at Bermuda, rather than staying below 30°N. I changed the fishing lure and was rewarded by hooking a HUGE Dorado. It fought well, leaping out of the water, displaying its vibrant blue and yellow body. I slowly pulled it towards the back of the boat and with a final defiant leap, it got away - bugger!
We had another very pleasant day bobbing along in 5-10 knot winds. By five o’clock, the wind was blowing a steady S10-15 and off we went. The sky has a total cover of high stratus with 4/8 low cumulus – I wonder what it means?