Explore Lake Travis on a 37' Beneteau sailboat
We have teamed up with two other boats from our group and are heading almost due south together. Shortly before this shift started, we hit the doldrums and progress has slowed tremendously.
It’s a beautiful, clear day, there’s just not enough wind for sailboats.
The Gulfstream not only brought us further south but also brought warmer temps along with it. With the water from the gulfstream coming straight up from the Gulf of Mexico. It’s much warmer now than it was yesterday. I’m actually wearing shorts today!
We finally caught the Gulf Stream and with the assistance of that current I actually saw 17 and 1/2 knot speeds from the boat! At this location there’s a bend in the current and we rode that wave a considerable distance southbound towards our goal!
It’s a sunny calm day today, we’re still making about 5.5 knots with about a 7 to 8 knot wind. The sun is warming us up nicely and we’ve even had some visitors drop by to say hello to us on the boat.
It was a chilly night sail, with beautiful moon rise right as my first watch began. I had to continually change our course as the catamaran I’m on doesn’t like sailing more than 120° off of the wind. As soon as my shift ended we did a 270° tack to get us closer to the heading we were looking for.
We spent the day waiting for our provisions and critical safety gear. Currently we’re being promised that the EPIRB will arrive tomorrow. There’s a chance that I may end up driving to Providence to pick one up at the West Marine there.
We finished off our stay in Jamestown with a wonderful meal at Beeches, the lobster bisque and swordfish steak were exceptional!
The EPIRB finally showed up so we finally cast off and set the sails around 14:00. We sailed rather closely to this ship shipping ship well setting our sails and headed off for the deep blue sea.