nah, don't worry about staying alive, just make sure to get some good pics.

kidding obv, GL!

We left Norfolk for Bermuda at around 1100 on Saturday morning.

It is now just after 0200 Sunday and we just arrived back in Norfolk and finished tying off to the same slip we were tied off to 24 hours ago.

Everyone is OK, no injuries. We had a catastrophic engine failure about six or seven hours in. Some time around 1800, after sailing out to near the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay. Starboard engine became completely inoperative due to the prop shaft becoming fully uncoupled from the transmission. Connecting bolts are all out with significant shearing. Tied the prop shaft to the engine to keep it from fouling the rudder and turned around.

We limped back to Norfolk very slowly using the port engine, will investigate and try to determine cause tomorrow. Owner suspects we may have picked up a crab pot.

Guess it will take a little longer than expected to make Bermuda.

yuck

Aren't there big buoys attached to crab pots (watcher of Deadliest Catch)?

There are very small floats attached. Think the size of a 1 liter soda bottle.

Doesn't look like we hit one, prop looks fine. Transmission has been pulled and mechanic is working on it. He thinks one of the nuts vibrated free, causing a bolt to vibrate out, then the resultant plate vibration popped out the rest. Makes sense looking at the plate:



The holes you see in the smaller plate are where the connection bolts used to be.

Mechanic pulled it yesterday and is working on it today. Assuming parts are not an issue, my guess is we head out again on Tuesday or maybe Wednesday.

This is a photo I took near the rally start line of a crab pot float. It is about 60 feet away. Do you see it?




Now imagine trying to spot that when the seas are not super calm, or at night. Now imagine trying to spot a black one at night.

Crab pots are a pain in the ass.

Here is a shot near the rally start line off the bow:



Those other sailboats are in the rally also.

We did get our sails up for a bit on Saturday:

wish I could just tag along to go across the Atlantic or Pacific...

just get ****faced drunk all day, fish for tuna, eat some tuna, sleep and then do it again tomorrow.. sounds like fun

Chopstick, do you have a mullet?

Great thread. DeCaptain got me into sailing (been sailing steady for three years or so here on the Columbia River after reading his thread), so I love the 2+2 sailing love.

No mullet, growing it out to donate to charity. It's pretty much all the same length, about a foot. Pain in the ass to deal with, unlikely to do this again, no matter how many cancerous children require wigs.

de captain has gotten at least a half dozen 2p2ers hardcore into sailing, and dozens more casually so. He is pretty awesome.

Land sighted! Bermuda about 10nm miles away. Radar isn't working but other than that, all is well. Saw a whale this morning and a few spinner dolphins came up near the boat about 5 minutes ago. I guess they are the Bermuda welcoming committee!

I hear triangles are the non-preferred geometric shapes in that area, stay away from those...

Made landfall and joined the other rally folks for a fish fry dinner at the yacht club. Here are some of the other 40ish boats in the rally. I'm sailing in the huge catamaran with the blue stripe on the far left.

Have been doing a 2-6 watch since Wednesday. Both AM and PM. Will be nice to get a full night's sleep tonight.

Random question but have you ever seen waves breaking on the outer reefs? From what I can tell from maps they seem deep enough to take all the power out of the surfing waves on the beaches but not shallow enough to actually break often enough to try to surf there.

Oh and I am asking about Bermuda in case it wasn't obvious. I think it would be awesome to combine a super long sail trip with surfing out of the way surf spots that aren't that crowded.

chopstick,

Enjoying your writing. Wanted to recommend the movie All is Lost. It's Robert Redford out single-handedly sailing, and he runs into trouble. Seems like something any sailor would be interested in seeing.

If/when you see it, I'd be interested in getting a real sailor's opinion of it. Were the situations he got into realistic? Did he take the actions an experienced sailor would've taken? You know, things around how well-made was the film from a nautical point of view.

(I found it to be very good from an entertainment perspective. The other parts seemed plausible to me, but I've only been with other people who know what they're doing, I don't know myself).

ntanygd760 - I haven't seen, but this is only my second time in Bermuda. Looked pretty calm both times I've entered. There are a lot of shallows and shoals around the islands, I think they probably chop up the waves pretty good before they get close.

golddog - I turned that movie off about 25 minutes in. Not sure if I count as a real sailor yet, but I had a very low opinion of that movie very quickly, and I almost never give up on movies and turn them off before they end. I turned it off because it was so unrealistic, I couldn't exercise or maintain suspension of disbelief. Some of the things that happen just in the first 25 minutes are so ridiculous, it's hard to explain just how ridiculous they are. I think a fair number of folks with offshore experience have similar opinions. It's too bad, because I really wanted to enjoy it.



The official start for the Bermuda -> Azores leg starts on the 14th. We will probably leave on that day with everyone else, or maybe one day later. The owners want me to stay on the boat with them for their entire 5 year circumnav. How sweet is that? Let us go go go!

Holy **** I would give anything to go on that trip. would cut off my pinky toe or finger

Chop,
When you update this can you please explain exactly what I'm looking at in the pic w/ the ****ty blown up ronstan block and green line, or preferably post a zoomed out photo? Is that a running back, jury rig, or the actual backstay?

This is one of those things that really grinds my gears (not you, your involvement or anything - but that rigging).

all,
Don't look for the pic, it hasn't been posted yet though I expect it will be posted shortly.

My mspaint diagram with the shark didn't explain it adequately?!?!

Will take another photo tomorrow.

The cat has two sets of backstays. Both are block & tackle using half inch nylon line. The pair at the stern go to the masthead. The pair fore of the stern (attached to the top of the hard cockpit) go 2/3rds up the mast.

Had a marine surveyor come and take a look today. He told us to rip down the wall and ceiling panels and he'd come back tomorrow to take a more detailed look. I'll know more tomorrow afternoon.

Unfortunately the paint did. I was hoping that wasn't what I was looking at. Rigging rant coming soon.

eta:

I'll wait in hopes of a better picture before going off but **** that's some terrible rigging not adequate for a boat that size. It obviously hasn't been cared for, properly inspected, or prepped for a transatlantic.

Obviously none of this is your fault but it really grinds my gears. It's the type of **** that gets people killed. Imagine where you'd be if you were standing there when that let go. Careless captain = dead crew.

I'm going to bet that it let go in less than 20kts of wind. If so, how do you think the rest of the rig would fair under 50kts of wind?

Fwiw - those are your backstays and the pair fore of the stern that go 2/3's up are your running backs.

Just spammed your yahoo email account with about 20 photos. All reduced to 33% of original, so I can supply higher res of any of them.

One thing I reported incorrectly was that the backstays are entirely .5 inch line, but the backstays are cable from the masthead down until the last 10-15 feet or so, that last 10-15 foot portion is the green line that went through the block. The running backs are entirely .5 inch line.

I'll post some photos here in a bit for everyone else that is wondering what the hell we are talking about. In a nutshell, we left Bermuda on the 14th for Azores but had to turn around after a rigging failure about 75 miles out. Now back in Bermuda for repairs.

OK, so I'm going to skip Vegas, as who cares about a Vegas TR. Tons of those over in the LVL forum if you want to see that kind of thing. Also going to skip the part about volunteering at the St Thomas International Regatta and driving around Puerto Rico for a week, because if I don't, I'll never catch up to the actual sailing stuff.

Here's the summary of those two:

St Thomas International Regatta was fun. I volunteered on a couple of race committee boats, helped run the race, etc. Flew over to Puerto Rico after a week in St Thomas.

Puerto Rico was a blast. Landed in San Juan, met up with friends and hung out. My mom really likes Puerto Rico but doesn't like to travel by herself, so since I was there already, I convinced her to fly down and we drove around Puerto Rico together for a week. We started in San Juan, and basically did a huge loop of most of the island. Drove up to Guavate from San Juan, then down to the coast a little east of Salinas, then just stayed on the coast the entire time until we looped back up around to San Juan again. We covered probably about 80% of the Puerto Rico coastline. Maybe once I get the sailing stuff caught up I'll post some photos from that.

Anyway, on to sailing.

We left the Annapolis area on March 26, aiming to be down in the Norfolk area in a few days. This was a sunset the night before we left:




And me casting off the bowline (no mullet, just long hair):




Motoring away from the dock after fueling up and pumping out:





That guy is a friend of the owner who was helping on the Annapolis -> Norfolk leg.

The trip down was fairly uneventful. The seas got a little choppy at one point, and one of the other crew got pretty seasick. He is hiding somewhere under this bundle of blankets:




It was really nice to look on Google Maps at all the traffic I'd be leaving behind:




Here's a shot of just after we went under the Bay Bridge:





We had sails up for a bit, but motored or motorsailed much of the way:





We anchored in the Chesapeake the first night. This was the view upon waking up in the morning:




The second night, we tied off to a private dock. The owner was invited by a shipwright he knew to dock at their house, so we pulled right up to their private dock, got off, and had dinner with them that night:

If you are interested in interior stuff, here's the primary electrical panel:





and here is the starboard engine room (with the aftersteering room behind it, and another hidey hole behind that):





Taking a few steps back from that last shot shows how you get to the engine room - you go through the head, then the shower, and through the door in the wall of the shower:





And doing a 180 from there shows what it looks like when you look toward the bow on that same starboard side:





My berth (bed) is on the left, about 5 feet up in the air. Lots of drawers under it. Dead ahead is another berth area that was converted to a small workshop, and ahead of that is a storage area in the most forward part of the starboard pontoon.

We arrived in the Norfolk area with no issues, and tied up at a marina in the area:




That big yellow cable is a 50 amp electrical cable for shore power. You can also see the inflatable fenders hanging off the boat, they keep the boat from banging into the dock.

We hung out in the Norfolk area for a few days doing final provisioning and getting fishing stuff:




as well as admiring our neighbor the Iwo Jima for a few nights:




This process also involved getting rid of a bunch of stuff off the boat. The owners ditched like 20 bottles of alcohol:



I managed to save the Hennessy XO and a Glenlivet 12.


Here was one of our neighbor boats at the marina - who says cats don't like the water? Meet an ocean-faring cat:





We left with a few other boats on May 3:





and threw our own sails up:




(main in the center, genoa on the left, jib on the right)


getting some sweet views of the Norfolk Naval ships on our way out:





but quickly turned around after discovering a serious transmission problem. We ended up replacing parts of the transmission, after heading out to a not-quite-a-junkyard for marine parts way out in the boonies of Virginia:





and after a few days of repairs, we were sorted out and departed a second time toward Bermuda:

Cats do great on boats. They think they are captain of the whole world, and lots of little nooks and crannies to explore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship%27s_cat

The Nut family brought the house cat on a boat trip when I was very young. Cat loved it. Kept the kids entertained.
Easiest litter box cleanup ever.

So off we headed toward Bermuda:





I set up a little handline fishing rig for crossing the gulf stream:




but neglected to use a wire leader. That resulted in something biting through the 120lb test monofilament. I'm guessing it was a wahoo. Goodbye, Salty Runner lure. I kinda deserved to lose that lure anyway as I hadn't re-rigged it with a treble hook either. Just laziness all around on my part. That line is tied to the center pole, and then tied to the fender sitting there (which is secured to the deck) to take the initial strike of a fish.

We didn't have much wind on the way to Bermuda:




and ended up motoring pretty much the entire time. That's good and bad. Bad because it's much more fun to sail, good because motorsailing is pretty easy and lazy:




After a few days of puttering along like this, we finally started closing in on Bermuda:





and promptly lost our radar a day and a half out of Bermuda proper. No clue what went wrong, it just stopped working. You don't have to have radar, but it's nice to have. We spent our watches being extra diligent, as not all ships use AIS, so you pretty much have to make visual contact if you don't have a radar.


Once we were within sight of Bermuda:





the drudgery of motoring along the last few days dissipated rapidly. We came east along the south side, then headed north up the east side toward St. George's island, which is the top island:




It was nice to have Bermuda in sight:





and strangely enough, I was arriving exactly a year to the day after the last time I had sailed in.

When you enter a harbor, there is usually a channel that you need to sail through. Channels are areas where the water is deeper than the surrounding area. These channels are usually marked with channel markers, which are floating buoys that look like this:





That's SG2, which is the #2 channel marker for St George's. There's another one that you'd see if you spun around and did a 180 - SG1, which is the red paired marker for SG2. You stay between the markers, which keeps you in the channel. That should keep you from running aground. The next pair are SG3/SG4, and so on.

Here we are entering the section of the channel nearest the actual land, you can see there are two channel markers floating out there:





and here we are having passed through the very narrow section of the channel which is bordered on either side by land. We've just passed through it into the bay, and I took the photo looking backwards:





Yep, it's pretty narrow.


One of the fun things about Bermuda is that many of the buildings are painted bright colors, usually pastel colors. It looks like it's permanently Easter:





We headed over to Ordinance Island, where they have a small office specifically set up to clear vessels through customs:





and cleared in. No issues, they are very laid back at Bermuda Customs. Just fill out a form or two and you're good to go. The only thing they pressure you on is moving the boat out of the way ASAP, as the customs dock is small. It can fit two small boats, or one large one like ours.

After clearing customs, we motored our way over to a marina where a bunch of the other boats were docked. You can get an idea for just how large the catamaran is with this photo:




That boat closest to us is about 37ft/11m long. The catamaran I'm on is about 60ft/18m long. The catamaran is also significantly wider. Makes for a lot of room. Nice for living on the boat, a little tougher for maneuvering the vessel in small spaces. That's why we're parked on the outside.