It feels like this whole year has been a long string of momentous occasions. We wrapped up our land life by selling our house, our cars, and most of our stuff. We said goodbye to family and friends in Canada. Then we moved aboard, worked hard to get the boat ready, and, finally, after so many years of dreaming and planning, we started cruising. A string of momentous occasions. A long string filled with excitement, stress, sadness, happiness, achievement, frustration, and every emotional colour under the sky.
Today we gathered momentum for another momentous experience: we got ready for our first overnight passage. It's a tiny passage by anyone's standards, only 160 nautical miles. Nothing more than a sneeze for the old salts, this passage will be etched in our memories forever. We are ready to make mistakes and learn from them. Tomorrow we take the first tangible step to becoming mariners.
We picked our weather window carefully. So carefully, in fact, that we'll probably motor the whole way through. There's very little wind in the forecast.
The plan is to exit Charleston harbor at 0600 tomorrow morning and maintain the necessary velocity to arrive at the sea buoy to St. Mary's Inlet no later than 1300 on Tuesday.
Luck, as always, will plays an important role tomorrow. But we've done everything we can to minimise its influence. Everything is stowed in its place, the life raft and ditch bag are easily accessible, jacklines and tethers are ready, spirits are high and anxious at the same time.
You can wish us luck regardless. It's always good to have it as a friend.
09 November 2013
Change on the fly
This is a very intense life we're living. Every day is different. We get up when the sun rises, usually in a different place than the day before. We were never early risers but there's something to be said about seeing the sun rise while you lift the anchor and head to a new destination.
Sometimes we have beautiful and easy days of motoring (there are few opportunities to sail on the ICW). Some other days we have very busy and, at times, stressful days.
Every night we plan what we want to do the next day. That involves listening to the weather forecast, planning the route we'll follow, finding out the state of the currents and tides for the area so we know what time we should leave, and, lastly but not less important, finding a well-protected anchorage. But route planning is the easy part! The hardest part is the execution. Some times the day goes as planned, sometimes we need to adapt as we go.
Just the other day, as we were approaching Shallotte Inlet (in southern North Carolina), we started hearing all these calls on VHF Channel 16 from boats running aground in that area. With 6 feet of draft and at low tide, we didn't want to risk it. People were running aground in 5 feet of water! The problem was there weren't many options for dropping anchor before getting to the problematic area. And when I say there weren't many, I mean there was just one tiny place. Fortunately, we were able to get to that place and spend the night there. The next morning we crossed the inlet at high tide and avoided the drama and stress of motoring over skinny water.
Another example of this last-minute change of plans happened a couple of days later when we were on our way to Georgetown, South Carolina. We were a little bit tired so we wanted to have an easy day. We planned to only do 25 nm and get to Georgetown. But as we got closer, the day was so nice that we decided to skip it and head closer to Charleston. So we quickly planned the routes on the computer, imported them on the chartplotter, and kept going on our merry way.
As we got closer to Charleston the next day we almost had to change plans quickly too. We had to cross a bridge with a charted 65-foot clearance, and our mast rises 62 feet over the water. Most of the bridges have height charts at the bottom, indicating the current clearance. Being extra cautious as we are (enter chicken clucking sounds), we always check the height charts because the tide obviously affects the clearance of a bridge. The problem is, not all the bridges have height charts. And when they do, they're not that big and therefore are not easy to read, even using binoculars. As we were approaching a bridge at high tide, we started rapidly evaluating alternative plans that would avoid crossing that bridge. The height chart seemed to read 61 feet of clearance. We almost turned back to wait for low tide. But after getting a little bit closer we saw the clearance was in fact 63 feet and we were able to cross the bridge without any issues.
I was always used to having to adapt to changes quickly at work. But never have I applied it to my personal life as we're doing now.
Sometimes we have beautiful and easy days of motoring (there are few opportunities to sail on the ICW). Some other days we have very busy and, at times, stressful days.
Every night we plan what we want to do the next day. That involves listening to the weather forecast, planning the route we'll follow, finding out the state of the currents and tides for the area so we know what time we should leave, and, lastly but not less important, finding a well-protected anchorage. But route planning is the easy part! The hardest part is the execution. Some times the day goes as planned, sometimes we need to adapt as we go.
Just the other day, as we were approaching Shallotte Inlet (in southern North Carolina), we started hearing all these calls on VHF Channel 16 from boats running aground in that area. With 6 feet of draft and at low tide, we didn't want to risk it. People were running aground in 5 feet of water! The problem was there weren't many options for dropping anchor before getting to the problematic area. And when I say there weren't many, I mean there was just one tiny place. Fortunately, we were able to get to that place and spend the night there. The next morning we crossed the inlet at high tide and avoided the drama and stress of motoring over skinny water.
Another example of this last-minute change of plans happened a couple of days later when we were on our way to Georgetown, South Carolina. We were a little bit tired so we wanted to have an easy day. We planned to only do 25 nm and get to Georgetown. But as we got closer, the day was so nice that we decided to skip it and head closer to Charleston. So we quickly planned the routes on the computer, imported them on the chartplotter, and kept going on our merry way.
As we got closer to Charleston the next day we almost had to change plans quickly too. We had to cross a bridge with a charted 65-foot clearance, and our mast rises 62 feet over the water. Most of the bridges have height charts at the bottom, indicating the current clearance. Being extra cautious as we are (enter chicken clucking sounds), we always check the height charts because the tide obviously affects the clearance of a bridge. The problem is, not all the bridges have height charts. And when they do, they're not that big and therefore are not easy to read, even using binoculars. As we were approaching a bridge at high tide, we started rapidly evaluating alternative plans that would avoid crossing that bridge. The height chart seemed to read 61 feet of clearance. We almost turned back to wait for low tide. But after getting a little bit closer we saw the clearance was in fact 63 feet and we were able to cross the bridge without any issues.
I was always used to having to adapt to changes quickly at work. But never have I applied it to my personal life as we're doing now.
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| Here it's how it goes: We see a bridge far away, and start looking for the clearance charts. |
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| The bridge gets closer and sometimes we still haven't read the charts. |
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| There it is! Couldn't they have make it a tiny bit bigger???? |
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| Not mistaking the clearance now as we pass by. But even if we know this, sometimes we pass it thinking at the same time "OMG! OMG! OMG! We're not going to fit!!!!" It looks tight from down below. |
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