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November 6th, Sunday - Hampton, Virginia
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The excitement in the air is palpable. I myself
can hardly contain it. All of the preparations and
planning of the past month or more are coming to a head
tomorrow at noon. We have a skipper's meeting
today at 4pm to review the sailing instructions and
scrutinize the weather forecast and Gulf Stream
analysis. There is another weather update tomorrow
morning at 8:30am before the chaos begins.
Fifty-one boats will be pulling away from the docks at
Bluewater Marina for the starting line at the mouth of
the James River. Rumor has it they are going to
start the monohulls first and then us multihulls once
the others have cleared the line. In a race like
this, being over the line at the gun counts for very
little. Choosing the correct course for the
conditions, both waves, current and wind, will be the
major factor in the outcome of the race. But of
course, who's racing?
Our crew is on board and happy. Lew Hill, a
veteran of the Caribbean 1500 but a newbie to catamaran
sailing, arrived on Thursday.
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Gregg Weiss, a newbie to the Caribbean 1500 but a veteran
catamaran sailor, arrived yesterday.
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They are both great guys. Lew is a family
counselor based in New Jersey. I can't wait to see
what he has to say after 10 days on a boat with us!
Greg recently sold his Catana 472 catamaran and bought a
home in West Palm Beach, Florida with his wife Rebecca.
Most recently, he spent a couple of weeks in
Mississippi, volunteering with the hurricane victims.
Greg helped Joe sail the boat from Fort Lauderdale to
Annapolis in April so he already knows the boat pretty
well. We couldn't do it without them and are very
grateful to have them along. Cassie and Juliana
are sharing a cabin and Greg and Lew are alternating
between the salon and the other big bunk. Once we
start standing watches, it will get more interesting,
but we think we have a good schedule worked out so that
everyone will be able to sleep well.
I
did the last provisioning run this morning with Trudy, a
local volunteer who has made all of our lives so much
easier with her generosity. She drove a bunch of
us to the grocery store, calling to see which location
received the shipment of fresh fruit and vegetables
first this morning so it was out and waiting for us by
the time we showed up at 10:30. I felt sure that
this was the load I would bring to the boat and wind up
stumped, trying to find a place for everything.
Miraculously, it all fit! We have flank steaks,
pork tenderloins, hot dogs, hamburgers, a couple
different kinds of pasta sauces, frozen vegetables,
chicken breasts, and of course, taco fixings in the
freezer. The fridge is bursting with salad, lunch
meat, cheese, pate, carrots, cauliflower, squash, and
milk. The bread is stored under one of the seats
in our salon, as are the dried goods and also the canned
goods. We have one cupboard that houses the often
used items and is chock full of Oreos, crackers, cans of
soup and chili, salad dressing, peanuts and other
snacks. There is another cupboard under the sink
where I put the penne pasta and cereal, along with paper
plates and cups, plastic bags and miscellaneous other
items. That is about it for storage, except of
course for the wine and beer. That goes down in
the bilges (see the August 8th
entry).
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In
the course of replacing the main, we decided to replace
the reefing lines as well. These are the lines
that allow us to make the sail smaller in the case of
heavy winds. We have three reef points in the
sail, so three lines to replace, in addition to the
outhaul, which pulls the clew or back of the sail tight
along the boom. Several boat units later, we have
a much nicer reefing system. Other than that, our
project list for today was pretty mellow. We went
over all the safety procedures with the crew, and worked
out our watch schedule. We decided on three hour
watches. Joe will be on from 12 to 3 every night
and day, Greg from 3 to 6, me from 6 to 9, and Lew from
9 to 12. We will adjust as needed depending on how
everyone is sleeping, the kids, and meal preparation
requirements, but that is our starting point. Now
we are just waiting to go!
Our cell phones won't
work after tomorrow mid day. We do have a
satellite phone and the number is posted on the contact
us page. Our sailmail email address will be the
best one to use for the next week or so. We will
be able to download our zialater mail using the
satellite phone, but I'm not sure how often we will do
that. You can follow our progress, with daily
position updates on the
www.carib1500.com
web site. We have regularly scheduled radio
check-ins at 7:30am Atlantic Standard Time (one hour
ahead of EST) and 7:30pm in which we will all
state our positions. These will be relayed back to
the webmaster each evening and he will update the site
in the morning.
The forecast is for light winds to
start out with, but I'd rather start in mellow, pleasant
conditions than too much wind and rain. The
weather is again shorts and T-shirt temperatures today,
so spirits are high.
Can't wait to be updating you from the tropics!
Much love,
Christy, Joe, Cassie and Juliana
Next entry
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Many thanks to our
friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up
the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
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