Georgetown to Cave Cay - singlehanded

Today was my first truly singlehanded passage.  It was not very long, only about 35 nautical miles, but it was good!

I raised anchor at Georgetown at about 7:00AM, and started making my way northwest through the Elizabeth Harbor.  This time I chose to deviate from the recommended Explorer Charts' tracks, instead, I simply cut through wherever I felt was deep enough.  I might not have done this before, with Lorena onboard, but now I am the only person onboard to suffer from my mistakes so I have a bit more leeway to explore.

I made it out of the harbor around 8:00AM and started heading northwest towards the Cave Cay cut.  The winds were supposed to be coming from the north in the morning and gradually clocking to the northeast through the day.  My observation was that the wind was from the north-northwest, preventing me from sailing straight to my destination.  Instead, I was forced to sail (motorsail to be honest) west-northwest, then motor straight north, then go back to sailing west-northwest, you get the picture...  At around 2PM the winds did finally clock around enough for me to just sail straight!

The ocean (Exuma Sound) was calm with an odd swell coming from the east-southeast which graciously propelled my towarda my destination.  Occasionally I noticed some sets in the swella which were disproportionately bigger than the rest.  The thought of getting one of of these sets while going through the cut concerned me.  When waves hit opposing currents such as in this cut, they become steep, and sometimes break.  However, I managed to slowly make my way through the cut and did not observe any breakers.  My engine was throttled about halfway and the sails were full, but the ebbing current in the cut was so strong that I speculate I was only doing about one knot of speed over the ground!

Once inside, the motion of my boat eagerly welcomed the nice, clear, calm waters of the Exuma Bank.  Soon thereafter, I anchored in calm water on the lee of Cave Cay.

Going through this cut brought to my mind the engineless sailors out there.  In a case like today, an engineless boat would have to wait until slack tide at 8:00PM or so, and then make it through the cut.  These people are my heroes, I wouldn't have the patience to do that unless in the case of an emergency, and then I would be breaking the classic rule "don't enter strange harbors at night".

It looks like tomorrow and thursday are going to be good days to sail, but probably not so on friday and saturday... So I'll have to plan to be anchored somewhere protected on thursday.  According to Dan from Spice, who listened to Chris Parker on the SSB this morning, this coming front may bring some nasty squalls with heavy winds, so that makes the need for a good anchorage even greater.

Things that make Seas the Moment easy to singlehand

Anchor locker with a bow roller
A bow roller leading to an anchor locker makes for easy anchor deployment and retrieval, we have several anchors on the boat but rarely use any other than our primary anchor which is a Fortress with 30 of chain.

Harken roller furling
This makes the job of unfurling and furling a breeze, and to a certain extent, allows me to reef the jib while sailing.
Note:  I wrote "to a certain extent" because headsails on furlers are allegedly not really designed to be reefed much... But I'm not an expert on that subject to elaborate much... I believe the sail stops acting as a foil after being furled in to a certain extent...

Main halyard led back to the cockpit
One of the previous owners added a couple of blocks, a winch, and a cam cleat which makes raising the mainsail possible from the cockpit.  I generally prefer to raise it by hand right by the mast, then I tighten it up from the cockpit.

Lazyjacks
Lazyjacks act as a kind of cradle that prevents the mainsail from spilling all over the place when being dropped.

Autopilot
Boats with fin keels such as Seas the Moment generally don't track as well as boats with full keels.  When her sails are well balanced she will hold a course upwind, but when going downwind, this is almost impossible due to the waves lifting the stern at an angle... However, our tillerpilot (autopilot) takes care of that for us, when engaged, it will hold a course based on an internal magnetic compass that allows it to keep the right heading.  We named our Autopilot "Andres" in honor of a third crewmember that could not make the trip.

Amazon Kindle
This is not necessary for operating the boat singlehanded, but it will entertain you during long hours of boring sailing. I love it and it broke recently, I will most likely go crazy as a result of this event!

One thing I would love to add to her would be an Aries Windvane or something like it... This would enable her to hold a course (relative to wind direction) without using any electricity!

Farewell Georgetown

I first arrived in Georgetown about 1.5 months ago, it is a nice harbor with a strong cruiser support network, and most of the basic supplies anyone might need.  Anyone interested in extended cruising could learn the ropes during a short cruise down to Georgetown...

During the last few days I've spent a lot of time with the people from Kokoi and from Meant2B.  We've gone surfing, wakesurfing, barhopping, and we've also had some awesome dinners at both boats.  When not doing any of those activities, I've spent much time reading on my Kindle which I appear to have broken a couple of days ago (the screen has a segment that doesn't work anymore, not sure how or why this happened).  Having a broken kindle is going to take a toll on my lifestyle, ever since I don't have a TV I've been going to sleep by reading for a while...

Tomorrow, a number of boats are planning to leave the harbor, the weather looks like we may have to motorsail a lot due to lack of wind, and the little bit of wind there will be, will be coming from (you guessed it!) the nose.  This will be my first solo passage, it should be easy in tomorrow's conditions... I've spent most of the day getting the boat ready for sea again, fortunately it is a small boat and it doesn't take very long to put everything in order.

Yesterday I was offered one of the most tempting opportunities ever, to crew on a friend's boat down to Cuba, and travel the country by train for a few weeks.  Not only is the plan ridiculously cool, it would be while doing it with two of the most awesome people I've ever met! Last night I was leaning towards going with them, but this morning I decided that I've already spent too much time and money around here, I'm ready to head back and get the boat sold in Miami so that I can finally make it home.  It's been fun, but I'm ready to become a land person once again.

Today, both Kokoi and Meant2B were leaving the harbor, it sucks to say goodbye but it is likely that our paths will cross again in the future.

Waiting for weather

Weather, outside of catastrophic events such as hurricanes, was not a big part of my life. I did not make many decisions based on it. I might choose note to go to the beach on a rainy or very cold day, but going to work, or pretty much anything else that I did could be done during any weather. Taking a trip to Key West, for instance, could be planned and followed through. This is not true for sailors. For the past few days several boats in the harbor have been waiting for the right weather to get out of Georgetown... Right now it is blowing about 20kts with higher gusts, making even going to shore a difficult task. The worst part of all this is that the weather window that we had been waiting for is changing a bit on us so we don't really know when we'll leave. When I talk to friends and family about going to my next destination, they almost always ask "so when are you going to be in ?", my answer is usually "I don't know, it could be one week, maybe three!". These answers sound confusing at best, and dismissive at worst... Usually, the next part of the conversation involves me trying (unsuccessfully) to explain that I live by the weather and do not intend to risk boat or crew for the sake of reaching somewhere by some artificial date... Can you imagine how sweet it would be if going to work depended on the weather? "yeah, I'm sorry boss, I'm not going to be able to go to work today... I'll be home just chillin in case there is anything I can do for you from there...". Please note that the same principal does not (should not) apply to going home from work...

First few days on my own

A couple of days ago we had some really nice waves and offshore wind in Exuma Sound.  Matt and I spent a long day surfing waist-high glassy waves over two feet of rock!

We have also been investing time in the time-honored tradition of beer drinking... Sometimes we do this at the beach, sometimes in town, other times on boats...

Aside from these two activities, we've spent time wakesurfing, building bonfires, and doing nothing at all... Such is the hard-knock life of the unemployed.

Not all is fun and games though, I've also been spending time cooking and cleaning.  The task that seems to take me the longest is doing dishes, I seem to procrastinate on this all the time, until I find myself forced to do it in order to cook, which has the undesired side-effect of dirty pots and pans... It is a neverending cycle, not to mention that my faucet doesn't work, so I have to get saltwater with a bucket and use that instead (this is possible here given that the water is so clean), then I rinse with freshwater.

Some would say that I'm having a blast out here on my own... They would be right!

Transitioning into a singlehander

Yesterday, we decided that I will continue this trip by myself!  Lorena needs to go to Colombia for some family matters and I will be continuing this little adventure on my own.  It was a tough decision for us but I think it will be a fun challenge.  I will miss her dearly...

I have been preparing for this possibility for a while by doing many of the tasks by myself... Our autopilot has been working well (knock on wood) and I'll have to rely on it a bit more when doing some of the trickier tasks such as reefing while under sail... Most of the other tasks that usually require both of us to be engaged simultaneously will have to be tackled with better preparation or planning (docking, anchoring, cooking under sail, etc).

I must admit that I was a bit concerned about having to singlehand, but then I also know that plenty of people cruise singlehanding without issue, often on boats that are more difficult to handle than Seas the Moment (Catalina 27) which is a pleasure to sail...

As I write this post Seas the Moment is morphing from tiny home to tiny bachelor pad.  My surfboard is in plain view and all the girly things are slowly being packed away...

Wish me luck!

Salt Pond to Georgetown - bittersweet

Heading back is bittersweet.  Heading back implies that I did not reach my original goal, but it also allows me to try to give Seas the Moment a new home, and run some errands that I'd need to do in Miami.  I'll also have a chance to visit some of the places that we skipped on the way south. 

We are underway right now, passing by Hog Cay in the easternmost tip of the Exumas headed toward Georgetown.  We will be stocking up on stuff and extending our visas.  This passage has been uneventful so far, there has been barely any wind so we have been motoring in flat seas, which I don't mind at all.  Had we not been able to get the throttle cable fixed on Wednesday, we would have been motoring at idle speed and would probably be doing about 1 mile per hour!

I feel I've gone through an interesting transformation during this trip so far, I've learned to not give a fu©k about anything and to just do what I want!  This reminds me of a Southpark episode...

Anyway, here are some pictures of what this passage has looked like so far (note how the wind seems to always be on my nose!).