Day 3 & 4: Abaco & Eluthera
Buoy 'N Sea
Phil and Trish Littman
Sat 24 Nov 2007 21:14
|
This post was sent directly from Buoy N Sea. Still
catching up. No coordinates yet.
Getting our Sea Legs
Any queasiness any of us may have felt has
subsided. Luckily, no one got sea sick and now we're starting to view this
boat as our second home. The wind and waves are still bouncing us around a bit,
but daily chores are getting easier.
 After getting pummeled in the Gulf Stream, we try
to dry our clothes. But nothing seems to stay or keep dry at sea.
 Alex keeps watch for ships.
Abaco
We weren't able to stay north enough to keep from
tacking, so we ended up on a starboard tack with ENE winds, heading almost due
North for most of the day. We won't be able to clear Abaco either, so our next
waypoint is just west of the tip of the island. We reached this waypoint at
night, and was able to see the outline of the dark island against the horizon
only a few miles away on our starboard, before tacking back around on a SE
course.
We decided to try to play music from an Ipod Justin
brought. We used an FM transmitter to hear it through the cabin speakers. This
FM transmitter worked much better than normally does on land due to the
interference from radio stations. But offshore about 100 miles, it sounds great
and we were rockin' out.
Some of the songs heard on the
playlist:
Bob Dylan - Blowin'
in the Wind, Hurricane, Shelter from the storm
Billy Joel - Captain
Jack
CCR - Bad Moon
Rising
Led Zeplin - Communication Breakdown
Elton John - Rocket
Man
We spotted another sailing vessel and tried to
contact them using VHF. The conversation went like this:
Buoy N Sea: "This is sailing vessel Buoy N Sea at
[our current position], heading [our COG] attempting to contact sailing vessel
off our Starboard. Over."
Unknown Ship: "Yes Buoy N Sea. This is
[unintelligible]. Switch over to channel 62. Over."
On Channel 62:
Buoy N Sea: "This is sailing vessel Buoy N Sea. Are
you the sailing vessel off our starboard?"
Unknown Ship: "What's your position?
Over."
(we give our position)
Unknown Ship: "No this is a warship.
Over."
That conversation ended soon after that. Sure
enough 4 miles off our port side [opposite the sailing vessel] is a
moderate-sized US warship in the middle of the Bahamas. Captain Steve says US
warships can go [and be] wherever they want and often show up where you'd least
expect them.
Eluthera
After clearing Abaco, we were back on a starboard
tack again with ENE winds heading North, in order to clear Eluthera. We would be
on this course for the next 24 hours.
A major concern for offshore sailors is getting run
over by bigger boats. Phil installed a great radar system called AIS that not
only lets you see a boat's location, and course heading, but you can also
download the boat's name, it's speed over ground (SOG), and it's course over
ground (COG). And if you try to contact that boat through VHF and they
don't respond, you have the ability to raise an alarm inside the cockpit of
the other boat to get them to respond. Now if the boat is heading straight
for the middle crosshairs that means it's on a collision course with you. That
happened on our way up and around Eluthera and like a pro, Phil notified the
other boat. Since we were under sail, we had the "right of way." The other boat
in this case came up as "Silver Shadow." It was a large but funky looking cruise
ship.
The conversation went as follows:
Buoy N Sea: "Silver Shadow, Silver Shadow, this is
sailing vessel Buoy N Sea (pronounced 'buoyancy'). I have you on my AIS and it
appears that you're on a collision course or near collision course with us.
Please respond, Over."
Silver Shadow: "Yes Buoyancy. This is Silver
Shadow. I have you on radar. We'll alter our course. Over"
We were then able to detect that the ship altered
its course from 315 to 310 and passed us 1.5 nautical miles off our starboard
side.
Communication
Problems
A lot of time is spent trying to trouble shoot our
communication problem. We cannot dial out through the computer and satellite
phone for some reason. The laptop that could connect stopped working (we suspect
from the shock of slogging across the Gulf Stream). The second laptop's battery
died as we were connected and sending the first day's post. Since we lost the
inverter we would not be able to charge the laptop battery. Things were not
looking good as far as the blog went. Our only hope of posting to the blog was a
smaller spare inverter that Phil had packed. But
when he retrieved it from where it was stowed, it was sitting in a plastic bag
half-full of sea water. The jostling in the compartment ripped the bag. Then
everything was flooded the night the inverter burned up. A bunch of other
equipment was also water logged including dremel drills, power drills, tool
boxes, and miscellaneous spare parts. We decided to try drying out the inverter
for a day or so before plugging it in.
Thanksgiving Comes
Early
We weren't sure how much electricity we would have
to power the refrigerator so we decided to eat the Thanksgiving turkey that
Alex's wife Judy packed for us. It was a hit with the crew and definitely beat
the wraps that we've been eating for the past 3 days.
|