Sailing with Bob and Melinda on SV Counting Stars! (Day 4)

Calm seas, but head-on winds

After a very refreshing night of sleep in an actual bed (not on various spots in the cockpit and saloon), we woke up early to another beautiful day! 

We did our morning checks of the engines, cleaned the raw water strainers and had breakfast. We pulled up the anchor, secured it and the bridle and started our trip up the outside of the Keys.  Our plan was to get to No Name Harbor, located at the very bottom of Biscayne Bay, just South of Miami.

This was one of our stops during our ASA sailing school and is a great anchorage. 

This day was pretty uneventful.  Even though the trip from Boot Key to Biscayne Bay requires a gradual turn to port for the entire trip, the wind magically made the same turn and we motored the entire way.

Sailing with Bob and Melinda on SV Counting Stars! (Day2/3)

Exciting! Time to actually hit the water!! (or did the water hit us...)

7am and we were up and at 'em! Melinda made some delicious egg and asparagus scramble that we had on a tortilla, along with some diced melon.  The folks from American Yacht Outfitters were back by about 8am to get the last few things done.  They wrapped up the rest of the items from their punch lists, the water tanks were topped off from the dock pedestal and we were heading to the fuel dock right around about 9:30am.  Right when we wanted so we could have the best/longest wind for our sail.  Nick, from the outfitters, took the helm to bring us to the fuel dock and after about 50 gallons of diesel, the half full tanks were topped off.

Bob did a great job of getting us out from the fuel dock and back to the narrow channel to Charlotte Harbor, which we would take to get to the Gulf of Mexico.  The plan was to motor until we got out to open water in the Harbor before raising sails. We could see white caps as we headed out the channel and soon thereafter we could feel them too.  They seemed to settle down some as we got into the deeper waters of the harbor.

The topping lift, which keeps the boom from going lower than you want, was replaced when the boat first arrived in Punta Gorda, and when it got replaced, it appears that something was not done correctly as the topping lift line was wrapped around the main halyard.  We had to use a pair of binoculars to be able to tell that was what was happening.  We also discovered, through several failed attempts of raising the mainsail and one ripped-off sail attachment point at the head of the sail, that the short line at the top of the sail used to raise the top bit of the sail against the battens also seemed to have been mis-routed.

Sailing with Bob and Melinda on SV Counting Stars! (Day1)

Vendors meeting deadlines and submersible docks

The trip to help move of friends Leopard 45 from Jacksonville to Ft. Lauderdale started with a flight down to Punta Gorda Airport.  We left the ground in Raleigh just in time to avoid the early AM thunderstorms that were forecast to become possible PM tornadoes.

When we landed at PGD airport, Bob was already waiting in baggage claim to pick Sue and I up (which was super nice).  We then went to do perishable provisioning for the trip and divided and conquered the shopping list.  As we were driving to the Burnt Store Marina, Bob warned us that there were a number of people on the boat, trying to get things like their vinyl enclosures and cushions squared away before they departed.  They had been promised that everything would be done by that Friday.  They got close to completing on time.

SV Counting Stars at the Burst Store Marina

Our cabin (Port Aft)

On the plus side, the folks working on the boat, especially those working on the canvas (American Yacht Outfitters) did really nice work.

At some point in the day, we did a little route planing by looking at the weather and by using the route planning in the PredictWind app.  After Sunday evening, the wind turned foul for our trip up the outside of the Keys, so we all agreed that the first plan would be to try to sail as long as we could, hoping to leave by 10am Saturday and arrive in Marathon on Sunday around 6pm.

Bob and Melinda had been using a rental car while there and I helped Bob drop it off with the added help of a friend of their's Mini Cooper to which they were given access.  The line of storms that we missed on the way out extended all the way into Southern Florida, and they didn't miss us on the second attempt. As we were driving back from returning the rental, the skies were getting darker and louder.  We called the rest of our group still at the boat and figured out an early dinner plan to meet at the Marina restaurant.

We got over to the restaurant just before the skies opened up and the westerly wind started kicking up, a lot.  So much so that the fixed docks at this marina were underwater at the peak of the storm.  Andy (he's a 2020 Leopard 45 owner, that we met at the Miami Boat Show when we met Bob and Melinda) had jogged back to the dock to help Bob secure the boat from the high winds and the flood current that was now pouring into the marina at a visually noticeably rate.

They arrived back at the restaurant, with one or two dry spots between the two of them after they were happy with how Counting Stars was situated.  Dinner was actually very good, though our waiter could not remember things like who got the margarita with salt and without, who got the steak sandwich with mushrooms and who without.  These were very serious first world problems.

At any rate, we returned to the boat and soon after the folks from American Yacht Outfitters returned with some very cool "Transom-handles-turned-Transom Steps" and some panels to finish up the enclosure.  I ended up staying out in the cockpit watching and helping for a while (actually, yes helping, I was even thanked the next day when we saw them again!)

After they were all squared away, we all turned in, ready for our big sail the next day!

Tech Article - Hull Speed, Displacement Boats and Planing Boats

Tech Article posts are those that came about because of something I was writing in a more typical blog entry and decided to break out as a reference item.

Hull speed is nautical speak for maximum theoretical speed for a "displacement" boat.

A boat is basically just plopped into a body of water and displaces an amount of water equal to the weight of the boat.  A boat's weight and it's displacement are the same. 

That is true for every boat that is not moving.

Once you add movement, that can change.

A displacement hull is the name used to signify a boat design where the hull just pushes water as the boat moves. The fastest a displacement hull boat can move (Hull Speed) is determined with the formula:

HS = 1.34 * SQRT(LWL)

HS is the Hull Speed in Nautical Miles per Hour, aka knots 

LWL is the Length at the Water Line in ft.

As an example, as 38' monuhull sailboat, may have a 33' LWL.  Therefore, the Hull Speed for this boat will be:

HS = 1.34 * SQRT(33) = 1.34 * 5.74 = 7.7 knts

A Nautical Mile is a little longer than a regular (statute) mile, so 7.7 knts = 8.85mph.

That is the fastest that boat can move, (*kind of, more on that later). 

You may wonder why and the answer is kind of neat.

When a boat is moving through the water, it is moving that water and creating a wave of its own.  That wave starts at the bow (the very front) of the boat and rises up highest at the bow.  From the bow back, the height of the wave falls off and then starts to rise again, like any other wave in a body of water.  When a displacement boat is moving very slowly, there is a wave that starts at the bow and then falls off quickly.  As the boat accelerates, the wave takes longer to fall off, until eventually, it falls off and rises again at a distance that is equal to the boats length at the waterline.  The boat is trapped in the trough of its own wave and has reached Hull Speed!

Taken from a post on Cruiser's Forum

So to become un-trapped, the boat will have to exert considerably more effort so that it can push up against the front of that wave and start to ride on top of it.  If the boat has the power to do that, the boat is now said to be planing, where it is riding on top of the water instead of just sitting in it.  Hull design can make this a lot easier, and while the effort to go into planing is substantial, once the boat is there on top of the water, it doesn't take as much effort to stay there.

That's why a shorter bass boat, which may only have an LWL of 28', can reach a top speed around 60 mph.  At 28' long, it is only operating as a displacement boat until it hits 8mph, at which point and when given enough added horsepower, it becomes a planing boat.

It's also why a 1000' long oil tanker, weighing almost 1 million tons can travel much faster than a relatively light (8 ton) sailboat.

* so I said "kind of" earlier, referring to the maximum speed of the hypothetical 38' sailboat and that's "the fastest that boat can move".  If you add enough power, any hull will become a planing hull, but in reality, you never would and probably never could add enough to a regular sailboat to get it to be truly on plane.

Step 4 - Sailing on our Own!

It's been a month and we haven't been on a sailboat, what do we do?

Ever since our Learn to Sail vacation, we have been thinkin about another opportunity to sail.  We still had the potential to sail on S/V Counting Stars in April, and a possible trip with Lisa and Jesse to the BVIs, but that wasn't for a while, so we had to start looking at other options.

A Google Search of "bareboat charter NC" returned a few results, one of which was Bow to Stern Sailing, located in Oriental, NC. They were exactly what we were looking for and they were an easy 2.5 hour drive from our home in Cary, NC.  Oriental is a small town on the Neuse River, a brackish tributary to the Pamlico Sound.  The Neuse River, which starts as a small freshwater river in Raleigh becomes a 2+ mile wide body of water by the time it reaches Oriental and the area sees great wind for sailing.

We called and spoke with them and I wasn't sure if the ASA certifications would be enough, but after a few minutes of us talking they were comfortable that I knew what I was doing and had no hesitations to charter one of their boats to us. They have quite a few to choose from, ranging from a very modest C&C 25 and Cal 25, all the way up to a 42' Leopard catamaran and 45' Jeanneau Sun Oddysey.

Our friends Ray and Lisa were planning to leave their slip in New Bern, just up the Neuse River, and start their 10 month trip on the Great Loop at the time, so we also saw an opportunity to spend some time with them before not being able to for quite a long time.  Plus, another couple that Ray and I both worked with at Device Solutions, Reynold and Cathy also have a sailboat they keep in Oriental.

We figured out what they had available that weekend (March 23, 24th) and settled on an older 32' Endeavor; a pretty basic one cabin, one head boat that was plenty large for the two of us for the 24 hours we'd be on it.

Her interior smelled of diesel fuel, she was rough around the edges and the mainsheet traveler had recently come off its track, and when it did, some of the nylon guides in the assembly went missing.  Other than that, she was plenty seaworthy for our inland needs over the course of one night.

Bow to Stern did a great job of getting us checked in, providing us with PFDs and taking us on a tour of the boat's systems.  We moved our things onto the boat and after getting things situated, Jim and Mark helped us throw off lines so we could head out into the creek that fed into the Neuse.

Heading out to the Neuse we had to go under the bridge for NC 55.  Upon leaving the dock, we were told, as long as you see air under the horizontal concrete portion of the bridge, just above the water level, the boat will fit.  We motored for about 5 minutes before getting to the bridge.  It looked close, actually really close, but sure enough there was "air" and we fit.

We continued out the marked channel for a bit to get to deeper water and then raised the mainsail and unfurled the genoa. Seemingly at the same moment, we got the first of what would be many gusts that day.  This was the first time we'd been on a monohull.  It heeled a lot and very quickly.  Sue was pretty sure we were going to capsize and had a look of panic in our eyes.  For a moment, I was afraid she was going to be demanding a return to the dock.  Luckily she didn't, and after we got things right, we spoke of how it would be very difficult to actually capsize this boat in anything but pretty severe wind.  But, given that gust, we decided to reef both sails.

We headed on a Northeast bearing, on a port tack beam reach and we both eventually became very comfortable with the heeling, but, admittedly, it did take some time for both of us!

We only had about 5 hours to sail before having to head back so that we could meet up with Ray and Lisa, whom were motoring our direction from New Bern.  South River was our target; we were told by Bow to Stern that it wuld be a great place to visit and we'll have to make a return to there in the future, but honestly, we just wanted to get out and sail.  And sail we did, for about 2 hours, then we hove to and made and ate lunch.

After lunch we continued south a little more, even getting on a wing-on-wing run for a bit and then decided that given the change in direction of the wind we should head back since we would be beating back to windward on a zig-zag path containing quite a few tacks, including a few thrown in there to avoid some shallows.  It was honestly great fun and a great re-fresher of all the great things we learned in our class!

We got our friends Ray and Lisa on the VHF radio and they told us that one of the two, deep free docks in Oriental was available.  They had reserved a transient slip a few down from there and our other friends Reynold and Cathy were at that same marina for an event for their sailing club.  It seemed perfect!

We motored up to the dock and were coming up on it okay, and then a gust came from our stern and what seemed like a well lined up approach quickly turned into one that would overshoot the dock.  We some verbal guidance from Ray on the dock, I ended up pulled further into the dock area, which was actually a double dock, with a fuel dock on the left and the free dock on the right.  In this 40 foot wide by 50 foot long area, I ended up performing a 180° turn, pulling up on the port side instead of the orignally planned starboard.  Ray, Lisa and Sue helped us tie off and then joined us on our boat, along with Reynold and Cathy for a quick "success" beer before walking over to their sailing club party.

After hanging out with them for a while, visiting both of there boats, we headed to dinner right down the street from the marina.  The food was good, or it could have been that anything would have been good after the excruciating wait.  At any rate, we all returned to our respective boats with a plan to meet up the next morning for coffee and the local coffee shop.

The forecast was for overnight lows in the upper 30s.  Luckily, I had planned for this and we brought our zip together sleeping bags.  We decided to sleep in the convertible salon instead on in the forward V-berth.  Not sure why, but it wasn't that great of a decision, because it wasn't that comfortable.  The diesel fumes became quite noticeable with the boat all buttoned up, but the sleeping bags kept us super comfortable temperature wise, even when we opened a hatch for some fresh air.

After the morning coffee and hanging out with Ray and Lisa, we untied and made the short motor back up to Bow to Stern to return the boat.  This time I was at the helm as we passed under the bridge.  There was still air between the water and the concrete, so we proceeded.  There must have been less air though, as the tip of the VHF antenna clinked off of each rib of the concrete underside of the bridge!

After finding the right slip, we found Jim and Mark ready to help bring us back in.  They gave us some guidance, as the boat exhibited very strong prop walk to port when in reverse.  I was able to bring the boat in cleanly and they helped us secure the boat.

We tidied everything up, trying to put things back exactly as we had found them, and then carried our things back to the car for the trip back home.

Then I asked one more impactful question of Jim, "So are these all owned by Bow to Stern, or are they owned by private owners".  He replied that it is a mix of both.  Hmmm.  Given that our one day of sailing cost us $500, I was interested to learn more about a possible way to sail more without it becoming a very expensive expense.  Turns out they were looking for a another boat in the 38 foot range to add to their offering.  They had such a boat in their fleet last year and it did very well.

Interesting...a little too interesting...

-Mike