Short form trip report:

Wednesday morning, 8/8/01, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Monday afternoon, 8/13/01, Oriental, NC. 500 plus miles off shore, 100 plus up the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). Ship and crew all safe.

Longer form trip report:

Leaving Fort Lauderdale, the winds were against us, so even though we had the flow of the Gulf Stream to aid our progress, we had to make some big tacks to work our way up between Florida and the Bahamas. To keep us going we motor sailed; that is, we were sailing but were assisted by running the engines.

We saw a lot of shipping off the Florida coast but after clearing the major shipping lanes there, we had only limited sightings of other vessels and were never in danger of colliding with some large ocean freighter.

The winds eventually became more favorable. But then, they were almost directly behind us, which might seem to be the desired state but actually the most favorable winds would have been a little off to one side. So, we tacked downwind using long reaching legs.

The Gulf Stream is a beautiful, rich blue color. Where the two meet, the ordinary ocean looks almost brown in contrast. We saw some patches of Sargasso weed, but no large areas such as those in the Sargasso Sea. We had one rain shower, but no squalls. One night we passed between two thunderstorms, one on either side, and saw a great light show with lightening jumping from cloud to cloud. But we received hardly a sprinkle, the entire passage occurring in a clear window of opportunity during hurricane season.

NASA had a shuttle launch scheduled for Thursday, 8/9 and there was a huge restricted area across which we could not sail. That forced us to swing in farther to the west and lengthened our journey some. We had a fly over inspection by Navy aircraft as we neared the zone, and we actually cut across one corner but were out of the box before the time window came into effect. The restricted zone is the projected impact area where the solid rocket boosters, which are jettisoned, fall into the ocean.

At the scheduled launch time, we had a ringside seat, the boat was on autopilot and all hands were on the aft deck to watch. We watched, and watched, and watched. No launch. Bummer. Becky tells us they launched a day or so later, but by then we were out of sight.

Our plan called for us to sail off shore from Fort Lauderdale to the Beaufort Inlet in North Carolina. That would have left us less than 30 miles in the ICW. We made a course change on Friday and altered our course west a bit more to enter the ICW at the Cape Fear River inlet and avoid rounding Cape Fear in moderately large following seas. The night entry with no moon, tidal currents, building seas, and fluky winds was our most exciting time on the trip.

We spent that night tied to a fuel dock in South Port and called our daughter Becky so that she could put the message out that we had come in from the big water.

I really figured the offshore portion would be the tough part and that the ICW would be the easiest, but I miscalculated. There is a lot of traffic on the ICW from tugs pushing barges to kids zipping around on Sea-Doos and everything in between. The channel is very narrow in places and the current can be quite strong between the various inlets. We operated along the ICW only by day, since some areas can be very tricky at night. This is where the local knowledge of the crew was most helpful.

The Oriental-based crew consisted of licensed skipper, Andy Denmark, a North Carolina native who grew up sailing, and Ron Turner, a retired Navy captain (Ron has since picked up his skipper's ticket). Both of these men had made the trip before, and provided a wealth of information about sailing in general, weather, mechanics aboard a boat, and stories of local color wherever we happened to be. They added a great perspective to our trip, and we value the information we gained from each of them. Ron is a working maniac and was constantly working on some system of the boat. Neither of them had spent much time on a catamaran before, and we enjoyed their enthusiasm for sailing a different type of boat.

We had an engine alarm on Saturday, and lost some oil. We tied up at a marina and played with the engine all afternoon, trying to get it to repeat the problem. We never found the gremlin, but completed the trip with a little background anxiety. Losing that afternoon cost us an extra day so we spent parts of 3 days in the ICW instead of 2.

We had a great trip and thought we had made it without undue tension or exertion. However, when we had her all tied up and went into town for a couple of drinks and dinner, we found we were dead on our feet and crapped out about 8:30 that night.

There are a ton of things to take care of on the boat and we left many of them undone for now. We needed to get back to the house in Kentucky and take care of a few things there.

We never got the generator running, but since we did a lot of motor sailing, we had the engines to charge the batteries. (NOTE) The generator engine now runs great and a new 110v 4.2 KW generator has replaced the old 220v 3.5 KW unit.)

Lynn kept everyone looking forward to the next meal. We had her great Irish stew, chicken curry, quiche, roasted chicken, and other delightful treats along the way.

The trip up the Waterway was very scenic and we fell in love with this area all over again.

The boat was great offshore but the location and visibility of the helm station make it a little tough in the ICW. The engines use about ½ gallon per hour each, and running them is not a problem. We carry a little over 110 gallons of diesel, so we could motor a long way and fuel for the trip was very reasonable even though we ran the engines many more hours than planned. Tallying up the cost after refueling in Oriental, fuel for the entire passage was approximately $125.

From the sea buoy at Fort Lauderdale to the one at Cape Fear, it is 510 sea miles by the shortest route. We did it in about 60 hours so we averaged slightly over 200 nautical miles made good per day. That is really good speed. Of course, we sailed further than that tacking, clearing the restricted area, and changing course to avoid Cape Fear.

After all the bay sailing, day sailing, and location sailing we have done, we were looking forward to a passage off shore. We will probably have longer and/or tougher passages but we are virgins no more. This was a credible passage. The extra crew on board made the trip much easier, especially with everyone sharing night watches.

George and Lynn