News/Blog

After a bit more than two days at sea, I'm settling in to my routine—mostly: Reading and listening to audiobooks (I'm working on Red Notice now) Checking the chartplotter (for AIS vessels) and radar screen (vessels and/or anything else that might show up) every 20 minutes Eating (when I feel like it)

Snapped a quick photo of Scott setting off for England this morning. A special thank you to Tom Babbitt for getting the word out about his departure. So many of Scott's sailing buddies showed up to wish him well. It was truly a wonderful send off. Thanks guys!  Ruth

So I finally got started—about an hour later than I expected. I'm currently in a nice puff of wind from145 True and doing 8.5 knots (a bit more than 9kts over the ground thanks to a following tidal current). This morning was more craziness—mostly stress over making sure that I have everything I need, have taken care of business at home, made good on all the promises I made (I think!), and so forth. Fortunately, I've done pretty much everything on my checklist so, whatever hasn't been covered would likely have been omitted even if I delayed another week. If I promised you something and didn't get it done, I'm sorry. It truly slipped my mind. The folks at Lyman-Morse in Camden gave me a nice send-off—cannon, air horn, logo…

I mentioned in my last post that the icebergs are much further south than they have been in recent years. If you want to see what the “international Ice Patrol” is saying, here’s their site and here’s today’s iceberg map. So, what does that mean for routing? Well, if you look at the last few days’ reports, you’ll see that the ‘bergs are migrating south at a pretty good rate. So I plan to leave at least 1° of latitude (60 nautical miles) between me and the limit when I start, so there’s a cushion for 1) iceberg sighting error and 2) the expected drift over the next few days. (I’ll continue to check the iceberg situation and will change my route if necessary.) Here’s my current routing plan (without…

Yesterday, I took Resolute out for a final "instrument calibration—sail check—hydrogenerator test" sail. All went well, so it looks like I'll be leaving for Plymouth tomorrow morning. The weather looks pretty benign for the next week, with winds forecast to range from 5kts to 25kts (mostly from abaft the beam, so it should make for a comfortable ride), which is all good. The only issues on the horizon are: Air temperature: it's generally still pretty cold at night—close to freezing. Crossing the Atlantic in July 2015 I was pretty cold at night (and some days). So I'm very focused on trying to stay warm, especially before I cross the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream. Icebergs: the so-called Iceberg Limit (marking the area of risk for icebergs flowing down with…

After a winter of planning and making a few systems changes, Resolute was launched on March 17. But the new standing rigging (I had already put a lot of miles on the old stuff) wasn't installed until a week later, March 24. Since then, Lyman-Morse has been fine-tuning the installation of the batteries and charging system. But I did have a chance to bend on my racing mainsail, which I didn't use at all last year, so I could take a look at it and (more importantly) make sure that I had all the requisite bits and battens on board. On March 30, I sailed Resolute together with Glenn Cook from Doyle Sails and local Camden J-Boats aficionado Tom Babbitt, for the first time in 2017. We tested the racing main, a…

So I sent in my entry form and something like nine other documents on Thursday evening. The Race Committee asked for lots of stuff (all pretty reasonable for a race of this sort). But it wasn't clear when it was all due (the Notice of Race said the info should "accompany the entry" or somesuch). So I sent it all: Entry form Digital photograph of the skipper (me) Digital photograph of Resolute under sail (I had to choose a relatively old one that looked most like Resolute today—since I've just plastered a big "7050" on each side of the hull to meet another race requirement). IRC Rating Certificate (used to establish handicaps amongst the range of boat designs) Evidence of Insurance Description of my "qualifying passage" (the RC requires at least…