Adventures

We were finally able to cook and eat our first meal at sea. The seas calmed down a bit and all three of us were feeling well enough to wolf down some lasagna. Watch was uneventful, not much wind so we were motoring through the night.  When I was ready to go off watch we discovered some water ingress through the propeller shaft. Roger repacked the shaft and stopped the ingress. After that we discovered that the bilge pump was not working properly. We manually pumped the water out of the bilge and laid down to catch some badly needed rest.

A pod of dolphins came to visit and swim with us for about 15 minutes.
It made for a wonderful break in the day!

Things have calmed down a bunch. The wind has dropped to under 10kts, so we furled the jib and cranked up the diesel. We passed Charleston and the associated commercial traffic around 04:00. The rest of the crew was finally able to get some decent sleep, I’ll get mine after my watch. So far we have kept a course of 66° around 15-100 miles offshore.

We set two sails once we cleared the channel shortly after 13:00 and I took over with the first watch of the trip. Great winds, but the waves are rocking the boat heavily and all of us are a little queasy. Within two hours we saw a pod of dolphins, and shortly afterwards had a turtle (on her way back to the from laying eggs I suspect) swim within 10′ of Alchemy.

We have cast off the lines and begun our journey northward.

If you want to check in on me, this page should show my location up dated about 4-6 times aday

https://share.garmin.com/RogerNoble

Boat was provisioned yesterday, everything is shipshape, we are casting off
the lines as soon as we pick up a jug of engine coolant and some batteries
for the Garmin InReach transmitter!

Things are on schedule, looks like we will have some wonderful winds and
currents for the journey Northward!

Scott

3 days before I left for Iceland I was offered the opportunity to crew on a sailboat sailing from Savannah Georgia to Bar Harbor Maine. My first thought was – There’s no way I can pull this off. I’m going to Iceland in March. then I’ve got Eeyore’s Birthday Party in April, then Burning Flipside in May, then my sailing trip in the BVI’s (that was postponed because of hurricanes Irma and Maria) in June. I weighed in the positives and negatives while I travelling in Iceland and decided that this is another chance of a lifetime opportunity that I just can’t pass up. The captain, Roger Noble, is a seasoned veteran that has done this trip multiple times. The vessel, S/V Alchemy is a proven blue water capable vessel, having done this voyage several times before.

So… Tomorrow, I’m hopping on a plane to Savannah and boarding Alchemy, a beautiful 42′ Cheoy Lee schooner. Wednesday we plan to provision the boat, and Thursday, weather permitting, we cast off the lines and head north up the Atlantic seaboard for the ~1000 mile passage to Bar Harbor. Wish me luck, this should be another experience of a lifetime! I’ll keep things updated when I can though I expect to be out of cell phone range for most of the trip.