Doug

We have been at anchor in St George’s Harbor, Bermuda since Friday. We arrived at dawn, 6:30, checked in to customs, and found an anchorage quite close to town. We immediately went to sleep for a couple hours, went into town to get oriented, had a meal at a real restaurant, rowed back to Olive Oyl, and slept for 12 hours. Saturday, we spent, fixing Olive Oyl’s bilge pump (found a tiny piece of something stuck in a valve), organizing our stuff, and walking around town. St George is a small town in a small country. Bermuda’s population is about 71,000 (compared with Charlottesville, Virginia at 47,000). The whole country is only 21 square miles.

St George has a grocery store, hardware store, a number of small marinas, several restaurants, 2 gas stations, a laundromat, and some tourist features, but not too many to be irritating. A nice friendly place. After being in the Dominican Republic, I keep forgetting I can speak English here. The Harbor is modest too. There are about 30 sailboats here, some staying for weeks or months, then going back home. Others, resting and re-provisioning for continuing on, either to the USA, or to the Azores.

Today, we did laundry, bought ice, and figured out where to buy diesel. It was very windy today and rained quite a bit, a welcome change, washing the salt from our deck and everywhere else. Max observed wind: 30 Knots. Tomorrow, if it isn’t too stormy, we may go to Hamilton, or to the Royal Dockyard.

When mornng came we found a tiny flying fish on the deck. It was the size of a medium size goldfish. We see them quite often, emerging from the side of one wave, flying 50 yards and dissapearing into the side of another. What an odd creature. We had very rough conditions last night and this mornrng, probably because we were still in an eddy of the gulf stream. The boat was constantly rollng, and you couldn’t find a place to put anything. After a mornrng thunderstorm (winds to 50 knots!), things settled down to regular sailing, and we averaged close to 5 knots. I saw the back of a humpback whale. Ribeyes for dinner. New icebox holding the cold very well.

We left Cape Charles at 6:00 this morning, motoring tediously through the shallow places. We got out with out touching the bottom, sailed under the Chesapeake Bridge Tunnel, and are now about 45 miles outside the Bridge Tunnel, and 20 miles off the coast of North Carolina (near Kitty Hawk), moving smartly at 5 to 6 knots. The most amazing thing that happened today is that we have had a T-Mobile signal nearly all day. Better than at home.
Today, we have found ourselves inundated by small biting flies the size of a small house fly. They have come onboard while we have been up to 20 miles offshore, and I believe they are still coming. We have run into these pests in New England, and once off the coast of New Jersey, while sailing with my friend Peter. Perhaps ours are from New Jersey as we have a North wind today. They aren’t too bad unless you are trying to sleep. We have made much sport hunting down perhaps 200 of these buggers, and the decks are littered with a multitude of tiny corpses. The are rather easy to target, and both Salli and I have a “batting average” of perhaps 350. The trick is to hold the swatter in the middle, like it has a short handle.
At some point we will kill the last fly, and we will be vermin free until we get to Bermuda. We also had some other insects. At the marina, there was a wasp that clearly had made a home in our barbecue. I decided to leave her alone, figuring that we would sail away from her, and she couldn’t get back to her nest. Last night, I opened the barbecue for its intended purpose, and found the nest inside with four nearly adult sized wasps. I knocked the nest into the water, but the wasps kept trying to get back to the barbecue. I killed two of them, cooked a batch of ribs, and closed it up. Today, 30 miles offshore, there was a wasp flying around trying to get back into the barbecue. Where did it stay last night? In the smoky barbecue? The wasps are now gone, soon too the flies. The same phenomenon happens to contagious diseases. After a couple days at sea, it is unlikely for crew to catch a new disease.
We leave the spiders alone. They are on our side.

Hours after writing our last post, we had a change of heart, and diverted to Cape Charles. We found a cozy anchorage in Cherrystone Inlet in not much water. After “feeling our way” in shallow water at low tide (read run aground three times), we made it to a lovely bucolic anchorage where we saw commercial crab and oyster fishermen, but no other sailboats. We spent Wed night, and Thursday all day here, taking the dinghy 2 miles into Cape Charles and back. Cape Charles used to be the Ferry terminus for the Ferry to Norfolk, a business that folded with the completion of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.

Tomorrow, the plan is to get going early, with the next stop Bermuda.

Instead of telling what we plan to do, we will be telling what we just did. After our morning weather briefing, we were encouraged to expedite a bit, so we have started our long sail this morning at 8:32. We have had lackluster wind until a half hour ago. Wind is now 11-12 on our Port bow. We are maintaining our desired course, but we have to make a slight left turn to go out the Chesapeake Bridge Tunnel, so we are hoping the wind will shift as well. Morining should find us about halfway to Cape Hattaras.
Regarding the odd message that follows this post:: This message is being sent by email over an amateur radio net called Winlink. Winlink adds this message in the belief that this is going to a normal email recipient, instead of a blog, The message is for folks who respond to a Winlink email, which of course, you can’t. The message reflects the standard restrictions on Ham communication. No business and no bad words.
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Well, we are still in our slip in Regent Point Marina. The weather the last days had been delightful. Unfortunately the weather between here and Bermuda has been less so. We have delayed our departure for three days, and it looks like we will untie the lines tomorrow morning, and start our trip. We plan to sail down the Chesapeake Bay to Cape Charles, and, if we have time, anchor there for our last full night’s sleep before starting out to Bermuda Thursday morning. We have made good use of these three days, making a number of optional repairs, and culling some of the many possessions we realized we could do without. The rule of thumb is 1000 pounds (food water and stuff) for each crew member, and 2000 pounds is a bit of a load for a 10,000 pound vessel. All winter, Olive Oyl sat with her bow lower than her stern, but now she is on an even keel.

It is another year, and we are about to embark on a new voyage from the Rappahannock River in Virginia to the UK, yes— England. Our planned route is Virginia to Bermuda (1 week, more or less), Bermuda to the Azores (3 weeks), and Azores to Falmouth (2 weeks). We plan to spend time visiting Bermuda and the Azores while we are there.
Today we are packing our boat, and making last minute repairs, checking supplies, finding a spot to put everything in our little boat, checking software, and making sure our blog still works. Yesterday, we finished installing our new dodger, and mounted 4 small solar cells on top.
Our long term goal is to sail the British Isles until it gets too cold to be fun, and find a place to leave Olive Oyl while we return to Virginia for the Winter. Next year we expect to continue our sail to other parts of Europe.
Note: we are using expressions like “plan” and “goal”. None of this is “cast in stone”.
We plan to start out tomorrow (Sunday) morning.
The picture shows the inside of our Sprinter van packed halfway to the top.