We Enjoy sharing the journey through my blogs. We wonder what you really think about them, so don’t hold back and share your thoughts with us in the Comments!
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Goodbye to the best crew ever!
When you do an ocean crossing, there are many attributes you would look for in the perfect crew: knowledge, experience, good judgment, small footprint, multitasking, easy to live with, clean smelling, and good-natured. Lisa and Ken Karsten exhibited all these attributes and more. We’re going to miss you… That’s why we didn’t give you your passports back and are on the way to the airport!
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Dead engine, fishing weed, what next?
I caught your attention didn’t I? Where to start? Two days into our sail to the Bahamas from Portsmouth, VA our port engine died. Don and Ken (I gave up after a day) have been troubleshooting non stop. Low air tactics include blowing fuel hoses with compressed air, bike pump, makeshift tube with manual blowing. We’ve gone through a fuel filter and fuel oil filter replacement; and are seriously thinking of a second. Those Racor fuel polishing systems are looking mighty sweet right now. I have a feeling we’ll dedicate the necessary wall real estate in the future for this…
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We’re off!
We’ve crossed the ARC starting line and are off to the Bahamas. To track s/v enjoy specifically go to: https://www.worldcruising.com/carib1500/eventfleetviewer.aspx or load the ybtracker app. If you use the ybtracker app, you’ll want to go to the fleet tracker and select a Rally or Race. Choose ARC Bahamas. That information is updated every 4 hours and is talking to a little yellow tracker beacon on the back of our boat.
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Last day of preparations
So we’re doing last minute food provisioning, tying down the extra water, diesel, and gas tanks. More headlamps and flashlights and did I mention the kayak? Our crew (Ken and Lisa Karsten) arrived in time for the skippers briefing on weather, routing, and safety. Got those mini marshmallows but can only fit a turkey breast in the freezer for Thanksgiving. Getting extremely excited!
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Red is bad, blue is good, green is us!
So, in follow up to my last post about daily check-ins via SSBs, when in transit, boats must monitor Channel 16 on the maritime mobile band very high frequency (VHF) radio for emergency communications like May Day. Of course, sailors being a social lot, use VHF also to communicate with others underway nearby (SSB for longer distances). We have the luxury of an Automatic Identification System (AIS) transmitter and receiver (some folks only have transmit). So, for folks with all three, you can see the names of nearby boats, length, speed, and most importantly… direction. When we set an alarm…
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Our first radio chat room!
We were able to check in for the first time on our single sideband radio (SSB), to the 8:15 am SSCA and 8:30 am EST Cruiseheimer’s chat rooms of sorts. This is a time each day where cruisers around the world check in so folks know that they’re alive and well. Of course, it’s also a time to pass information that would be helpful regarding unusual sailing conditions, social information like Thanksgiving get-togethers, etc. We recognized the names of several boats that called in from Annapolis, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia, from being members of SSCA.org over the years. So,…