Publish Date: Monday, December 27, 2010
Location: Culebra, Puerto Rico
Coordinates: 18° 17.470′ N 65° 16.828′ W
We arrived safely in Puerto Rico yesterday morning, and we’ve settled into a beautiful anchorage off Culebra. This island, along with it’s sister Vieques, are known as the Spanish Virgin Islands even though they are technically part of Puerto Rico. We will stay here for a few days, and then go get settled into our marina on the mainland in Fajardo.
The rest of our passage from Florida went well. The wind and waves both continued to build during the last two days at sea, and we were fighting a prevailing current on the north side of the Lesser Antilles, so it was a bit of a slog. But we were so excited to get here that it didn’t matter too much. The whole trip from Palm Beach, Florida to Culebra, Puerto Rico was 1,040 nautical miles, and we burned about 530 gallons of fuel (about 2 nmpg). Not including our 34-hour layover for a repair in George Town, we cruised for about 170 hours, which represents an average speed of about 6.0 knots. This is about 1/2 knot slower than we expected, but we fought prevailing currents (versus tidal currents, which tend to even out) for almost four days during the voyage.
We had only one other mechanical problem: About one hour before we made landfall, one of our stabilizer fins shut down with an “excess servo warning”. Consulting the manual didn’t reveal much, except that resetting the system by turning it off, and then back on, might fix the problem. Since we were still in pretty heavy seas at that point, I wasn’t crazy about the idea of turning off the stabilizers since one of them was still working well, so we ran the last hour in open seas with only one stabilizer. Once we got behind the reef I rebooted the system and both stabilizers came back up just fine. I will contact Trac this week to find out what happened and why, especially to learn whether something is getting ready to fail. Kathryn and I were both very impressed with the performance of our stabilizers during this passage. We had beam seas for four days, with large, confused seas the last two days, and the stabilizers worked very hard (and well) to keep us as comfortable as possible (although not every crew members would describe the result as “comfortable”) — way to go, Trac!
Since we ended up cruising right through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we postponed our family celebration until last evening and today. Kathryn prepared a fabulous Christmas Eve dinner last night of beef tenderloin and Yorkshire pudding — yum! We awoke this morning to discover that Santa Claus had no trouble finding us here in the Caribbean. So we spent this morning celebrating Christmas, and now we’re getting ready to go swimming in the beautiful turquoise water that is now our back yard.
We want to thank those of you who sent us well-wishes for our voyage, and holiday greetings. We are very grateful for our extended network of “virtual voyagers”, and it is always a treat to hear from you.
Happy Holidays!
Hi Dave-Glad to hear you guys are in port, safe and sound. I was checking the sea reports while you were underway and it seemed like the seas were indeed growing by the end of your journey. I was curious if this was the worst sea condition you and your family have experienced on three@sea. Also, how big was it at its worst?
thanks for keeping us in the loop on a part of your virtual journey.
Merry Christmas and a happy new year
Good to here u made it
I would like to know the wave report. Merry Christ & Happy New Year
Woops Merry Christmas
All the best for a happy and safe new year.
The Hess family
We are glad that you made it safe and sound.
It sounds like your stabilizers are like our phones…………every now and then they don’t function correctly and I have to remove the battery which “resets” them and all is AOK.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!
Art
Hi guys,
Yes, these were the worst seas that we have experienced since we started voyaging on Three@Sea. Having said that, they weren’t that bad, and we are keenly aware that they can be much worse. One of the reasons we chose this weather window was because the seas looked reasonable to us. This is what we have always done, which is why we have avoided much worse seas.
For the last three days we had a steady NNE ocean swell that was 10-12 feet, with a period of about 12 seconds. During the last day and a half, the period shortened a bit, and the direction turned to be more on our beam than behind us. During this same period the wind waves grew to 3-4 feet, and eventually turned to be almost on our nose. This was expected based on the forecast, so we were ready for the deteriorating conditions. Once these changes occurred we had 10-12′ swells coming from the port side, with 2-4′ on the port bow, and occasionally they would combine in strange ways, heaving Three@Sea onto her side. Not much fun, especially in the dark when you can’t see it coming.
As I mentioned in the blog, the Trac stabilizers were working as hard as I’ve ever seen them work. We could not have maintained our SE course without them — we would have needed to turn south to put the seas more behind us. This was always an option, but it would have lengthened the trip considerably because we would have gone through the Mona Passage (between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico) and then around the south side of Puerto Rico.
It’s worth mentioning that nobody, including Kathryn, got seasick during this last day and a half. Kathryn was still taking Bonine; Ayla and I were not. Your body gets used to the sea motion over a period of days, so by the time the seas reached their worst we were all well-adjusted to the motion. Unfortunately we also didn’t get much sleep because every time you started to fall asleep the motion would jolt you awake (if not roll you off your perch). Needless to say we were very tired when we arrived.
Happy New Year!
David
Hello from BC
You’ll be experienced Blue Water Sailors in no time! Sailed to Hawaii a number of years ago – up to 30′ seas. Loved it out there – with the Albatross & Flying Fish!
I was telling some folks about your adventure & went to show them your u-tube segments. They seem to have been removed? Part of the upcoming TV thing or??
All the Best in the New Year
dd
Now that you’re in Culebra, get ready for New Year’s celebration. It’s a blast.
Dive on your anchor in Esperanza if you go there. The holding is terrible, but it’s definitely worth the stop.
So glad you are safe and that Santa found you!!!! Would love to see pictures or video of your new home local!!!
Hugs,
Jackie, Mike, Mitchell, & Anthony
David,
Thanks for the update. Would you have time to convey the sites for me to follow in sea reports etc. I would like to get more education at such and follow your future passages. Congratulations on the passage and We hope you have a wonderful new year.
Glad you all had you sea legs by then, we been following you for the last few weeks. 10 to 12 ft sea’s can be treacherous event in a vessel 100ft long.it looks like you may have been getting the fall out from the nore easter that hit new england.
At least it looks like the weather is good for you down in Culebra.
All the best to you and the family for a safe , happy and healthy New Year. Thanks for allowing us to accompany you on this marvelous journey.
You may have earned that black eye patch on this crossing. You get the pirate hat when you make the crossing WITHOUT stabilizers!
Argh!
Hey Kathryn, Ayla, and David,
It’s Ed and Michelle from the Greyfield Inn (which probably feels like ages ago for you now). Michelle and I are on a small island in the Society Islands right now (Vahine Island which is just offshore from Taha’a Island). We saw a Nordhavn cruise by earlier this week and though of you all. Hope things are going well and you had a great New Years!
I just started reading some of the blogs on the Nordhavn site. Thank you for yours. I look forward to following your stories.
I have lived/cruised on boats for nineteen years. You will enjoy yourselves so much – with so many good memories! Even the “bad” memories fade into oblivion over time – and really don’t seem so bad afterall. My Father used to tell me – “Memories – that’s what life is all about. Don’t stop making them!”
After experiencing sinkings, fires on board, huricanes at sea, huricanes in harbors, losing all our ground tackle – Oh, the list could go on – but, through all of the memories – Great Stories and Warm Memories!
Gang,
How is the worldwind vacation going? Getting lots of good sunshine and working on those tans?
Certainly the three of you have dropped off the communication routine as I imagined might happen once the dream for crossing the globe became a Carribean vacation once again.
Enjoy!
We’re all enveous regardless.
Johnny (aka Spanky III)
Hi guys,
What’s new? It’s been a while since you’ve posted. Where are you now? How is the weather? How is Three@Sea? Update us soon!