Agua Dulce - Log Day 20 - Hello, St. Lucia!

I took a day to decompress and sleep and just get reacquainted with land before I sat down to write this final blog post for the crossing. I think we all have mixed emotions about leaving soon. I think we are all a little bit sad to be leaving Agua Dulce in a few days, but very excited to go home to the US and England for Christmas with our families. The good news is our crew will all be back together in February to spend a few weeks cruising the Caribbean with the addition of Oli and Benji, Tracy’s sons. Sorry Cunningham kids. You’ll have to come another time! On our final approach to St. Lucia, we were welcomed by a pair of beautiful brown boobies. Ok, everyone, get your minds out of the gutters. Boobies are very common island birds with several species which inhabit the islands. The. read more...

Agua Dulce - Log Day 19 - Last Full Day at Sea

All of us are extremely excited to get to the marina in St. Lucia. We’ve been talking about what will be the first thing we are going to do after we arrive and get the boat tied up. It’s hard to say right now. Agua Dulce has been our cocoon for the last three weeks, and she has seen us safely 3000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean. It will actually be a little strange to leave her.Of course, we’ll head for a bar for the obligatory rum punch to herald our arrival to the Caribbean. Then, we’ll probably all take naps and try to get our body clocks adjusted from UTC to AST time (4 hours earlier) and see if we can sleep through the night without waking up for watches. We all need to be sure to cancel the alarms on our phones waking us up for our night watches or the rest of the crew might. read more...

Agua Dulce - Log Day 19 - Two more night watches to go...

12pmThe Sargasso weed is increasing greatly. (Who knew that there would be more weed in the middle of the Atlantic than in all of Jamaica?)Instead of all small pieces less than 12 inches in diameter, we are seeing long stringers that are up to 20 feet in length and a few feet wide. We are concerned that it might be getting wrapped around the hydrogenerator propeller. The hydrogenerator is a fin with a propeller blade on it that we lower into the water and attach to the stern of the boat. As we move through the water, the blade turns and powers the battery bank, so it is another means of charging even during the night when the solar panels aren’t receiving any power from the sun. If, however, the propeller is tangled with seaweed, it won’t turn and provide any power. It will cause drag on. read more...

Agua Dulce - Log Day 17 – Are we there yet?

10amNo, but we are now past the 500NM to go mark – 83% of the way to St. Lucia! (Thanks to Captain Charles for the constant statistics)We are starting to see boats appear on AIS again as we all converge on St. Lucia from the various courses we have chosen. We are headed straight for the island at a course over ground heading of 282ºM (M stands for magnetic versus T for true. Google magnetic deviation if you don’t understand what that means. I understand it, but would have a hard time explaining it succinctly.)We passed the point where the Mini-Transat abandoned boat was adrift. It is right in the path of many of the boats in the rally, so I hope everyone is keeping a very sharp lookout. We never saw an AIS signal from it even though we passed maybe 16 miles away from it. I hope it is. read more...

Agua Dulce - Log Day 16 – Counting down the miles!

We have broken the 700NM to go mark, and at 750NM to go, we were three-quarters of the way to St. Lucia. During my 11pm-1am watch tonight, we should break the 600NM mark as well. We’re all getting excited to be in the Caribbean! I wish I had downloaded some steel drum Christmas music to get us in the island holiday spirit. I will have to be content to listen to Kenny Chesney’s “All I Want for Christmas is a Real Good Tan”. We had a much more comfortable night last night. This morning, the size of the swells dropped dramatically and so did the terrible rocking from side to side. Unfortunately, the winds have also died down so we are not just flying along toward our destination. We could probably fly the spinnaker if squalls weren’t threatening, but they’ve been a constant companion. read more...