Caribee Sailing

It has been a long time since our last entry. We are still in Fort Pierce. The mainsail proved to be a much bigger problem than we thought. We were absolutely not able to get it out of the mast ourselves, we had in fact broken the furler inside the mast so we were not able to roll it out. It was so badly jammed in there that even a rigger up in a bosun chair was not able to get it out either. The mast had to come down to take it out and to replace the broken furler parts. The day of our appointment to move the mast we motored over to the well where the crane was waiting. The tide was on the low side and the depths were scary, but we started ... read more

We sailed past Amelia Island and out the channel to the ocean in the dark, only having to watch for one freighter coming down the channel towards us and one fishing boat just outside. Once past these two, all was dark. The wind was coming just off our back so we were able to keep our sail up, and the waves were not too big. I say "sail" instead of sails because our mainsail was strapped to the mast. While in St Marys we tried to take the sail out and fix the part that was folded on itself and jammed. Unfortunately the stress of taking it in and out with such force actually broke part of the furler inside the mast, and we were not even able to roll it back in again. We also ... read more

well it seems all the pictures posted, but not the text.....! Not much battery life in the computer, not much patience or time left to rewrite since I can't find the missing portion. I will finish my story soon!... read more

What a change from Fernandina Beach! We spent the first few days at anchor in St Marys river across from the town. Marsh grasses on both sides, quiet, birds, occasional dolphins, and tide! The first night was very calm and we slept well assured that our anchor was well set. The second night, however, we got more of an idea how tides and winds can whiz your boat around when they oppose one another... Marty spent a good part of the night up monitoring the situation, our many positions, and the fact that we were sometimes traveling up to two knots while at anchor! The wind was pushing one way and the current another, so we would travel upstream with the current and our 200 ft of chain would drag to one side a bit, and ... read more

We left Beaufort North Carolina at around 4 pm Monday 14th, a little earlier than planned by about 2 hours. However since we were ready and wanted to get out of the channel in daylight we cast off. The waves were higher than the forecast suggested, and poor Caribee was bouncing up and down. The good news is the motor does not overheat anymore! We knew the winds would not be in our favour, but we chose this weather window anyway because the waves were supposed to calm down to almost nothing for close to three days. At some point along the trip we would be at an angle to motor sail. The waves did calm down a bit ,and although it was not a smooth overnight ride it was relatively warm... only one set of ... read more

So this is the story of our rounding of Hatteras:we left Norfolk on Friday night at 10:30 the schedule is to get through cape hatteras before dark, we thought we could get there for around 1 pm so this left us plenty of room for error. We had a chart of all the wind forcasts for the next 24 hours as doing this trip is a non stop kinda deal since all the surrounding areas have rocky shoals. Cape Hatteras is known as the ship graveyard since there have been more then 1200 sinkings there, kinda spooky.So we had our ... read more