Ilene has cleared into Tortola

Roger here. Don't watch the video of the ocean rollers, taken with the camera held firmly against the top of the back of the boat, if you are prone to seasickness; and the last few seconds of the film are of my foot, while I tried to figure out how to shut off the camera. (But sorry folks, I can't seem to get the pics to upload yet.)

Having left Hampton, Virginia at 9:30 am on Monday, November 8 (Atlantic Standard time-- which is the time we are on -- one hour before Eastern standard Time), we crossed the finish line off the western end of Tortola yesterday, Tuesday, November 16 at 7:03 am, about seven days and twenty one and a half hours later. We motored for the first 3.25 hours (out of port), and we motorsailed (sailed assisted by the motor) during two periods: the first one dark night when we were advised to get south as quickly as possible to avoid a storm and the second from 2:30 pm to 7:15 pm the next day (the last evening), to make sure that crew could make their flights home. Thus we motored for propulsion for 43.5 hours (plus another ten in neutral to make electricity to keep the food cold and the boat supplied with electricity) of the 190 hours, consuming only 37 gallons of diesel fuel of the 95 we had aboard. The last night the winds came up again, but without the big seas, and we sailed again, but as a safety measure we untrimmed the sails in order to delay our landfall by three hours until a 6:30 sunrise. In fact, we sailed a very conservative (safe) passage, frequently reducing sail as compared to what I would have been tempted to put up if we had been in a racing division -- and still got here with a very fast time, especially compared with bigger boats who motored more. One night we had up only the small jib and stack pack. The stack pack is a tube in which the mainsail is stored when it is down. it varies from three feet high at the mast to one foot high at the aft and of the boom and is fourteen feet long. Yet it provides windage and is our smallest sail -- and that night we hit nine knot peaks of speed.

The winds were essentially at or toward our back the whole way (from variations of northwest on our journey to the southeast. If you followed our track on the rally web site you noticed variations in our course. (Our actual course was much more crooked because the computer takes our position every four hours and connects the dots by a straight line; so that if we round an island or cape, as we did at the end or the beginning, it draws a straight line from those four hour fixes, even if they make it appear that we sailed across land.) The website also says we traveled at six knots-- NO WAY! we were much faster though the wiggles get subtracted so that the computer should describe the six knots as velocity made good toward the finish line.

We headed south and hugged the US coastline to south of Cape Hatteras. We then turned southeast to cross the Gulf Stream, before establishing a rhumb line -- a straight line-- from where we were to the west end of Jost Van Dyke, five miles from the finish line which was south of Jost, off the west end of Tortola.

The Gulf Stream is an amazing 50 mile wide river of warm water flowing from the Gulf of Mexico northeast along the east coast of the United States, at two to 3 knots. it can get very nasty crossing the Stream if the winds are from the northeast, directly opposite to the stream's flow, but on our day of crossing, as almost throughout the voyage, the wind was from the northwest and hence at right angle to the Stream so the waves were not momentous in it.

Once across the stream, our course changes were caused by variations in the wind direction and by changes in sail configurations. Most of the time, sailing with the wind directly at your back (sailing "on a run") is the very slowest course relative to the wind. The boat is normally much faster when the wind comes 30 degrees or more off from that direct line. Shifting from one side of the rhumb line the other (gybing) is thus necessitated by the desire for speed. We would gybe to the other side of the line when we noticed that these minor shifts made the new more favorable than the old.

The most amazing thing about the boat was discovered as an experiment. We put the small jib out to one side of the boat and a portion of the big Genoa (approximately equal to the square footage of the jib) out to the other side. Thus we had two big wings out from the front of the boat, catching the wind and pushing us down wind, where we wanted to go. We did this without the whisker pole, a pole that holds the end of the wing out. And the two sails worked together!! Whenever one wing would start to collapse (think of flying a kite that has insufficient wind and hence starts to fall) the wind in the other wing would push it open again. Also we directed our autopilot to not follow a specific course, but to go into "vane" mode, following intelligence from our wind wane telling it to steer the boat directly down wind with the wind directly at our back. It did so with much less effort (use of electricity) than when trying to keep to a preset course on one or the other of the broad gybes. We kept this configuration of sails for more than 24 hours, until the wind varied so that being blown directly down wind was no longer along the rhumb line. One of the photos shows our instruments which reveal, by the arrow, that the wind is directly behind us. Inset in this display is the true wind speed -- about 20 knots. The display below shows our boat speed across the surface of the water -- an amazing 10 knots. Subtracting our ten knots by which we were running away from the wind, from the true wind speed of 20 means the apparent wind was only ten knots. Some of the boat's speed was caused by the waves, big waves that had been built up by a storm near Bermuda, that picked us up from behind and pushed us forward. Our greatest bursts of speed were when we were being lifted up by waves from behind and surfing down their front sides, and we slowed down as we slid backwards a bit from the tops of the waves after their crests passed us. But on this and other sail configuration we had periods of over an hour in which our average speed exceeded eight knots.

We had some system failures but none that prevented the completion of the passage or caused death as happened to one young woman whose captain diverted from Tortola to the Bahamas and missed the entrance, running up on a reef. A tragedy!

One of our failures involved the new SSB (long range) radio. It tested well and we made one scheduled position report to the rally, but then it stopped. The suspected failure is a wire that connects the black box of the radio to the face plate with the controls. But were able to use our short range VHF radio to send position reports and to receive weather reports from nearby boats, who cheerfully relayed messages for us via their SSB radios.

The next big failure was a hose which came loose and caused the fresh water pump to pump ALL of the fresh water in our two tanks into the bilge, where the bilge pump then pumped it overboard. No worry: we had gallons of bottled water plus juice, soda, milk, wine and beer, (though no alcohol was consumed until the last two days when the seas calmed down) but no water to wash our dishes or ourselves. But we had installed a water maker in August and we ran it over the next few days for ten hours producing about 60 gallons of fresh water, enough for showers. One highlight for me was when Dave, who had agreed to taste the new water, gave forth with a big wide grin and "Tastes Good!"

We also had lines that chafed, pins that fell out, blocks that broke, etc, but these we were able to repair or replace.

I can't say enough about our great crew. Bob Fleno is the current Commodore of the Harlem Yacht Club. I had not asked him to join us, despite his vast experience (two Bermuda races and two races to Maine among many others) and good sailing instincts, because I had thought that his Commodorial duties would interfere. But Bob, who sails an Island Packet 40 named Thai Hot, has his priorities straight and volunteered. His sage counsel and calm "lets just get it fixed" approach to the crises that arise, made him an invaluable member of our team.

Peter Weinrobe is an experienced small boat sailor so he knows the fundamentals but was new to bluewater sailing (the water is really blue out there). I teamed him to stand night watches with Bob. Peter was also our official photographer and I hope to learn to upload some of his beautiful shots. Peter is also an excellent conversationalist and kept boredom at bay with his questions and stories. I was pleased to be able to give Peter his first bluewater experience, as Bob had done for me a few years ago on a return passage from Bermuda.

Dave Hornbach, like Bob, owns of an Island Packet, named Eau de Vie, which he sails mostly on the Chesapeake. He is a very competent sailor. He is big and strong and would have volunteered to do all of the hard physical tasks if others did not occasionally beat him to the punch. He is a Flotilla Commander in the Coast Guard Auxiliary, and knows the rules of the road and the interpretation of lights, like the back of his hand- which combined with great vision are an unbeatable skill for early advance warning against close encounters. We also learned that Dave is a great chef, no mean treat in a rocking boat -- much harder than when the boat is at a dock or mooring. Dave was also our safety officer, frequently reminding us to clip our tethers (attached to our life preserver/harnesses) onto a line securely tied to two strong points within the cockpit or to strong jacklines (lines that run from stem to stern along the edges of the deck) whenever we left the safety of the cockpit to work forward. Thus tethered, if one of us did fall or get washed overboard, he would still be attached to the boat and the others of us could haul him back in. I teamed myself with Dave for night watches. Dave stayed with the boat throughout the week's delay in Hampton and will remain with us here in paradise until Saturday.

We all learned from each other, about sailing and about ourselves. It was a great and fast passage. I am elated.

Now I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of Ilene, the woman, and our two cats, including the adventurous Alpha Girl, who had a penny surgically removed from her small intestine yesterday at a cost of 210,000 pennies. They are scheduled to arrive here Wednesday. I have plenty of boat chores to do in the interim.