We found a stow away, this little fellow has been hanging around with us for about an hour now! We’re about 35nm away from the closest land, That’s about 39 regular miles for you landlubbers.
221203 15:25 Stowaways
221203 14:45 A Little Love
Nothing says “I love you” like a busted fan belt! Luckily we’ve got lots of spares and we’re able to get replace this and are on our way.
221203 00:00-09:00 Night Watch
Clear skies for most of the night with some beautiful views of the Milky Way and some spectacular meteorites last night!
We’re currently just south of The Turks and Caicos Islands, north of Hispaniola which contains the Dominican Republic and Haiti. That puts us a little over 1/3 of the way to Key West, averaging about 6.2kts. With 380nm behind us, we’re looking at about another 615nm to Key West. If the weather continues to cooperate, we may be pulling into Key West on Wednesday afternoon!
221202 14:35 Whales
Well, we only saw one and I didn’t get a photo, nor do I have any idea what kind it was, but it was definitely a whale and we were close enough to hear it exhale before it disappeared below the surface!
We’re currently about 30 miles north of Cabo Francis Viejo, Dominican Republic, just south of the Silver Banks of the Bahamas.
About 30 minutes later I saw a half dozen whale breaches off at the distance. Way too far to do any identification or get pictures. It was still cool!
We also ran across this interesting buoy for a drifting fishing line a little earlier.
221201 18:00 Fair winds!
Good news, it looks like the weather Gods are treating us well this week! The storm that we were worried about seems to be weakening enough to allow us to continue our journey without needing to visit a protected harbor. Our current ETA has us in Key West on Friday Dec 9.
221130 20:15 Setting sail
After motoring directly into the wind all afternoon, we rounded the Northeast corner of Puerto Rico a few hours after sunset. At 8:15 we were able to turn off the wind. We set our sails and are now flying northeast towards the Dominican Republic.
221130 14:00 Departure
There's a bit of a storm heading our way, so we rushed up the provisioning and departed Palmas Del Mar harbor at 2:00 p.m. this afternoon. Our goal is to get as many miles in as we can before the storm hits, ducking into the Dominican Republic if necessary to wait the storm out for a few days.
We're currently passing Ceiba Bay and Vieques Island that are both known for fantastic bioluminescence in the water during new moon periods!
AIS information
For those of you that know what AIS is, we are turning the on AIS and checking it out for the trip today. If this works, you should be able to track us at sites like MarineTraffic.com searching for the vessel TOOLOOSE. That’s all one word, if you search for two words it returns a different vessel.
Puerto Rico to Key West
I have received a last minute chance to crew on a 45′ sailboat from Puerto Rico to Key West next week, This looks like a ~1400nm journey. Soooooo, I’m heading south to Puerto Rico early Monday morning! Hopefully, this leg of the delivery will take ~6-10 dans and have me back in Austin by mid December!
Here’s the vessel that I’ll be on,
https://islandpacket45forsale.com/
And here’s my GPS tracking page if you want to follow me. I’ll pass along the AIS information when I receive it. https://tracks.SailRipple.com
I’ll also update this blog during the trip whenever I can
Fair Winds!
Day 11 – On our way home!
Our return was a pleasantly uneventful trip with minor inconveniences. The ferry was a little delayed, but we were still able to make it through customs with plenty of time to make our flights home. Both of the Miami legs (MIA>AUS and MIA>DFW) were delayed by about 30 minutes. That put me back in Austin shortly after 11:00pm. After picking up the luggage, I was back aboard Ripple around 1am.
Another successful SailRipple adventure is in the books!