10.48am Wed May 14 3222.69N 6440.26W
Here we sit at anchor in St George's harbour and it is still just as lovely as three years ago. We reached Spit Buoy at ten to six, where we waited for a Cruise ship to clear the channel. Then with Bermuda Radio's blessing we went to the Customs dock at Ordnance Island. By 7pm we were cleared in, anchored and toasting our luck at having enjoyed the best weather I have ever seen on this "Milk Run" up to Bermuda. This morning, sober as judges and almost as ponderous, we are enjoying the spectacle of 34 boats getting ready to leave for the Azores on the ARC Transatlantic Cruising Rally. They left the Virgins three days ahead of us, and motored most of the way up here, poor souls.
Some stats: since topping off our tanks in St Thomas, in seven days we have used a quarter of our 250 gallons of water, with showers every other day: so a topped up full tank will get us to the Azores with plenty to spare. We covered 927nm in 5 days 6 hours and 40 minutes, for an average of 7.31kts. We motored for the last 17 hours and 40 minutes at an average of about 7 kts. We ran the engine to charge the batteries for 4.5 hours - the solar panels provided about 80% of our electricity. We used only about 22 gallons of diesel. We stood 47 one-man watches, we had no man overboard (BFOB) and we had no accident or injury.
The boat sailed impressively, and we had just one breakdown: at 11pm on Saturday night the wind vane instrument stopped working; but that was simply fixed before we arrived: while motoring yesterday afternoon we found a loose wire behind the instrument in the binnacle. And when we went to pick up the anchor this morning, the windlass did not work: but the down button did, so we found our spare new switch, and twenty minutes later we had it installed and working. Love those easy fixes!
Dave tells me the rhumb line to Falmouth is now 2813nm at 065 degrees, but we of course will not sail in a straight line!
1710pm at dock. And we have the finest berth in the whole of Bermuda! We had called Sandra at Bermuda Yacht Services a couple of weeks ago to tell her we were coming; and after the ARC fleet cleared out, she put us on the town dock right next to the little bridge, across from the town square and the dunking chair - which was in full dunking mode just as we pulled in! Crystal's horsedrawn carriage with a pair of shire horses from Lancaster Pennsylvania are our shoreside neighbours; and possibly best of all, the White Horse pub is approx 93 feet from our bow! Yes Hayden and Radeen, this time we have the front row seat on the Customs Dock.
More later from Admiral Nancy, no doubt with with some pics.
John and Nancy, with Bob and Dave
In 2014 Adventuress sailed to Europe. She made landfall in Muxia Spain; then England. After cruising the English South Coast, and the Channel Islands, she wintered at Woodbridge, England. The next three summers we cruised England, Holland, Norway, Denmark, France, Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar. For the foreseeable future Adventuress will sail in Europe. UPDATE: it's October 2021 and we are sailing her back to the USA: Transat passage will be Nov/Dec: expect to be in Florida end of January.
