Adventures on Beannacht

Thursday 29th January

Our first ocean passage complete, 300 nautical miles in 66 hours. We left Cape Fear on Saturday afternoon and arrived in St Mary’s at 9.45am on Tuesday with smiles of relief and achievement on our face.

Our first night was the most exhausting and challenging, with 30-35 knot winds gusting to 40 knots. We had two reefs in the mainsail, reducing the sail area to about 50% of its full capacity, and eventually rolled in our headsail completely. With this little canvas up Keli still managed 17.2 knots surfing down a wave – for a boat like ours that’s really fast. The sea was fairly big too, about 8-12 feet from midnight to first light.

We took turns to be on 2 hour watches while the other got some precious sleep, although at the worst of the weather we were both on deck for a couple of hours together. The first night was so taxing that Keli and I were both off-colour for the next 24 hours or so, and didn’t really feel totally back on form until Tuesday morning. Rather than seasickness it was really just exhaustion, with neither of us managing to sleep soundly due to the noise of the winds and the boat’s motion crashing through waves.

Early on Sunday morning I woke up for my watch to hear the Coastguard attempting to hail friends of ours Michelle and Jon who had called in a Mayday from their boat Audrey. We were pretty concerned about them as the coastguard had received their Mayday but couldn’t make contact with them to establish their position to coordinate a rescue. Audrey was about 75 miles north of us so we didn’t hear their transmission, but we listened to the coastguard relay attempting to hail them for over 2 hours. I hailed the coastguard and provided them with as much information as we had on Jon and Michelle, their boat, and their intended course. Yesterday we received an email from Jon to say that they were ok, but a little beaten up as their engine had failed and mainsail torn in the heavy weather that we had also established. Great news that they were safe, but a big disappointment as they were also heading for the Bahamas.

On Sunday morning the winds calmed to 10-15 knots, much more comfortable, and consistent with the forecast for the previous night – we were both surprised by the ferocity of the winds through the night. For the remainder of Sunday we made steady progress and in the end we clocked up over 150 miles in the first 24 hours.

Monday could not have been more different; we were becalmed and drifting at about half a knot to the northeast, instead of travelling in our desired direction of southwest. At that stage we decided we needed to modify our plan and motor the remaining 60 miles to St Mary’s, instead of pushing to St Augustine. We waited another few hours as we didn’t want to arrive before daybreak, and to our surprise in the early hours of Tuesday morning after drifting for 12 hours, we got some fresh wind initially from the southeast, and later from the northwest, allowing us to sail to the mouth of St Mary’s inlet.

We’ve had a couple of days in St Mary’s recuperating, and this afternoon will move the boat out to anchor near to the inlet before sailing south to St Augustine at first light. We were delighted by Beannacht’s performance, and felt really safe and in control during the worst of the weather.

We’re also so grateful for the advice from Andy and Liza, Dave and Laura, and Humphrey and Claire, we heeded their collective advice to reef our sails early, and we left port with a one reef in the main already even though the winds were very light at that stage. This undoubtly kept us within safe parameters in high winds and despite breaking one of our battens because of an unexpected crash gibe, the boom swinging violently from one side of the boat to the other, the rest of our gear performed really well.

Here’s a little video of me out there (Kel was sleeping at the time, although of course my need for self-promotion is also greater)