Where we're going, we don't need roads

Route planning on a sailboat is kind of a tricky thing. You see, usually when you're planning a trip you know exactly where you're going, how you're getting there, and when you'll arrive. Like if you were taking a flight to the USVI's you'd know that you were flying American Airlines with a connection in Newark and you'll arrive at 8pm on Sunday. On a sailboat, things aren't quite so easy, you have to account for the typical wind directions during the season you are leaving, currents, seasonal factors, and dominant weather patterns. Usually, these are the factors that determine where you go. So when you're sailing you usually start out with a few general plans that inevitably change like the winds during your passage.

Basically, the plan is to leave (the cold) Nova Scotia as soon as possible and arrive in (the warm) Virgin Islands sometime in late December or early January. The routes in which we take to get there are still up in the air. All of those factors like wind, currents, and temperature make it so you have to have a few choices of paths to take when the time comes to make the voyage. It's much more confusing to type it all out here, so we decided to show you!

All of our routes share the same first leg. We plan on going from Nova Scotia to Cape Cod and then through the Cape Cod Canal to New York. From there we have a few options on how we plan to get South.

Plan A (yellow): For this route we originally thought that we would go from New York to Bermuda and then continue on to Antiga, where we could work our way West to our final destination, the U.S Virgin Islands. The awesome part about this route is that the wind would be going with us the entire way, which is a pretty solid thing to have. Some would say the negatives outweighed the positives. The Northern Atlantic, especially in November, is a cold beast of an ocean. There is the potential for violent (cold) storms in that stretch of water and it requires you to travel far distances from land (4 days from land when you're half way!). Considering we still have a lot left to go on our journey around the world, we figured we'd ease into it, especially considering the time of year we're leaving. This was our original plan back in July, but we've pretty much ruled this one out for now.

Plan B (red): In this route we would still go through New York , except from there we would set our sights on Norfolk, VA. We would then enter into what is known in the sailing world as the "Ditch". The "Ditch" as it is known, is the Inter-Coastal Waterway (ICW), the ICW is a protected canal and river system that goes all the way from Massachusetts to Flordia. We would take the ICW from Norfolk to Moorhead City. once we pop out in Moorehead, we'll point as high as possible into the wind, which will hopefully get us to one of the Eastern Turks and Caicos Islands, or maybe even Puerto Rico.  This plan is nice again because the wind would mostly be with us and we wouldn't have to sail directly upwind through the Caribbean as much as in Plan C and D. So far, Will and I are thinking this will be most likely the route we go.

Plan C (green): This option is pretty similar to Plan B except that we would point south for the tropics closer to Savanah. All it would mean is cruising down the coast of the states a little more, which would be great fun, but the further we head south, the harder of a trip we're making it for ourselves to get to St. Thomas. We would be fighting against the wind for the majority of the time going through the Bahamas and The Turks (which still wouldn't be that bad of scenery), but we would be less likely to be caught by any storms or violent weather. Which is always a bonus...

Plan D (pink): This option is the "if weather is sh*t" option, or the "when all else fails" route. If we can never seem to find a weather window and December starts to creep up on us, we'll go this way just to get to warmer climates!  In this plan, we would take the ditch (ICW) all the way from Massachusetts to Florida and then fight our way upwind to the US Virgin Islands. Plane and simple. Again though, still not bad scenery and would be a fun time, just take a lot, lot longer.

Will and I trying on our immersion suits, also known as Gumbi suits. 

To be honest, it's all going to be determined by how comfortable we feel after our first leg of the journey to get to New York.  During that leg we'll have a better idea on what the boat can handle. This will ultimately be Tilly's first test for the Northern Atlantic, and also the furthest South the boat has ever been!

Touchdown: Tilikum kisses the water once again.

The Tilikum has been re-launched and is resting happily back at her new temporary berth at the Bridgewater Marina. Today was the marina's haul-out day where everyone rents a big crane to pick up and store their boats on the hard for the winter. There was a puzzled look on many of the boat owners faces when the crane picked our boat up and sent it in the opposite direction as all the others.

It's funny how much better you feel once your boat is back in the water. We both feel like we're that much closer to heading south. We still have a few more projects above the waterline to do before we leave, but all in all, we're coming along. The last things that need to be finished up this week are jobs like install our new radar, finish up our solar panel mount, and install our new house batteries. Then all that's left is provisioning and pack up all our worldly possessions and take off!

We've reached a new milestone! We are now less than 10 days away from our estimated departure, November 1st!  Finally we can start looking at forecasts and trying to find a weather window to head towards Cape Cod! So, based on the weather forecasts for 10 days from now, which will most likely change a few times between now and then, it looks like maybe we will be leaving on Monday or Tuesday. The plan is to cruise down the coast of Nova Scotia and if the window lines up right, head straight across the Gulf of Maine to the Cape Cod Canal. Sandwich Marina to be specific. There, we're going to spend a night to regroup from our first leg over some food other than beeferoni and hopefully cold beer! A hot shower wouldn't be to shabby either. The next morning we'll go with the tide. Whenever its flowing south, we'll shoot through and on into the Long Island Sound. From there we'll set a course for Fisher's Island where we will moor up for the next week while Sam take's care of getting his insulin and supplies, and I take care of any last minute tune ups to Tilikum.

Weather routing software that we use to plan, route and look for good weather windows. Right now it's looking like 30 knot westerly winds on Saturday which would mean that our departure would be delayed a few days.

We had a very special person come to the marina the other day to visit. When I bought this boat from Joan Curren this past winter, it was known as the Seaquester. Joan had already sailed the boat to many places like Newfoundland, Sable Island, Maine, Cape Breton, and PEI. She owned AND SAILED the Seaquster from the time she was built in 1982 to the time she sold it to me in January of this year. Mrs. Curren is likely one of the few people that know this boat as well as Sam and I, and it was great to hear some tales of what the Seaquester has been through.

It turns out that Tilikum doesn't like being tied up. The boat had a tendency to break free and cruise through the mooring field, dodging around the other boats (with the occasional bump or two) along the way. Joan went on to say, "The other people at the Yacht Club told me that I needed a leash for my boat because she like's to wander so much!" Sam and I took this to mean, like any proud boat owner would of course, that Tilly wants to break loose and explore her surroundings!

It was great to stand and chat with Joan and her son Hugh, especially seeing the excitement in her eyes as we told her about the adventures to come for us and Tilikum. Sam and I would also like thank you, Joan for you generous donation to our safety gear, and for keeping your boat in great shape! Thank you!

Stay tuned! The next post will explain the different route options we have for our journey to warmer waters!

All for now!

Cheers

Capt. Will

Tilly Tales: Boatyard Edition

With one week to go until we re-launch, and two weeks to go until we intend to set sail, the excitement is quite hard to control! It is true what they say, "hard work pays off"! Our project list has reduced significantly in size and the mighty Tilly is shaping up to be quite the seafaring vessel. Long days and long nights definitely have paid off for where we are at in our readiness for the journey, and yet, there always still seems to be stuff to do! Now that I have finished up my job at the Mug and Anchor Pub, I can devote all of my time to making sure Tilikum is ready.

As we come upon mid-fall, I've gotten to see something that I haven't witnessed in almost 5 years. The change of season. I had forgotten how vibrant the landscape becomes when the leaves change color. That being said, I had also forgotten about just how cold it gets this time of year. Let's just say our "summer" cottage is not quite equipped for Fall/Winter living. The outdoor shower has quite a frigid breeze cruising through, especially in the mornings with the frost still on the ground! The cold definitely has made work a little harder, but what it has mainly done is keep our minds (and bodies) determined on getting to warmer waters. 

Soon, though, the fun part will come! Once Tilly hits the water, all we'll be able to focus on is the actual trip prep, opposed to making the vessel seaworthy like we've been doing the past few weeks. For trip prep, I mean things like provisioning, weather watching and specific route planning. Doing things like inventories for tools and parts. I realize this stuff may not seem that exciting to anybody, but to Will and I, it means we're that much closer to casting off and heading south.

All for now.

Capt. Sam

On The Hard

About two weeks ago Sam and I took the currently named "Seaquester" out for her last sail under that name.. The next time that she hits the water she will fly under the name of "Tilikum". We were taking her from Mahone Bay to Bridgewater.

We left Mahone Bay at 5pm Friday night and set a course for open water. We headed straight out into the Atlantic to test out our rig, practice some sailing maneuvers, and to get a taste for what the next few years of our lives could look like. It was great sailing, and as George Castanza might say "The sea was angry that day!". Turns out our trip coincided with the passing of Tropical Storm Henri off the coast of Nova Scotia. We figured we would be able to test ourselves and our vessel in somewhat demanding conditions. Everything went great! We managed to cover around 75 nautical miles in about 14 hours. Definitely learned a lot about the boat and what living is going to be like while at sea!  We even made a pilot for Sam's new nautically themed Aussie cooking show (a part of it is in our teaser video below). We set up shifts in 3-hour increments which seemed to work ok for us. With the high winds and large swell, we decided to put a double reef in our main sail and roll in a third of our blade jib. Jeeves, our current (30 year old) autopilot system, seemed to really enjoy the slop and performed pretty good, considering it was built during a time when eight-track tapes were "rad". Once we sailed about 15 miles out, we half considered continuing on to Bermuda! Then we realized we probably didn't bring enough canned ravioli and zoodles to make the trip

We arrived at the mouth of the LaHave early Saturday morning and made our way up the river to where our crane we had rented was waiting for us. We slapped the straps around the Seaquester and lifted her into the air and onto her stands.

It's been two weeks since we hauled the boat at the Bridgewater Wharf. Since then Sam and I have been hard at work refitting the boat, knocking off the items on our long list one by one!

Sam and my days have basically consisted of waking up, going to work, working to the boat, going to sleep, and repeating. I'm not sure how our wharf neighbors feel about the sounds of sanding, grinding, and drilling going on all the time even late at night, but then again our neighbors are mostly rusty abandoned warships and old fishing trawlers.

We are trucking along at a good pace and were happy with our progress thus far. We've had so much help from our fellow South Shore cruising friends (Thanks Dave, Rick, Luke, Pat and everyone else!) it has made a lot of the jobs go much more smoothly than Sam and I could have imagined! Here is a list of everything we've ticked off of our list so far.

Fair and fiberglass the keel and rudder
Clean the bottom
Give the rudder and keel a new barrier coat.
Replace rotten floorboards
Re-rig mainsheet
Replace main haylard
Replace topping lift wire
Re-wire stern light
Re-wire running lights
Install cabin and cockpit speakers
Inspect thru-hulls
Inspect chainplates
Inspect standing rigging
Inspect rudder post and bushings
Remove stanchions
Install emergency bildge pump
Install float switch
Fill fiberglass chips in bow
Secure cutlass bearing

There is still a ton of really big jobs to go but we're happy with how much we've accomplished in two weeks! Tomorrow will be the one month mark until we will leave Nova Scotia headed to New York on one of the most epic journeys in our lifetime!

All for now!

Cheers.

Will