Any of you buoys seen an aircraft carrier around here?
I’ve always loved the opening scene of Top Gun. Maverick and Goose and Cougar and Merlin get into a tussle with some Migs, which shakes up Cougar to the point he has a little bit of trouble getting back to the mothership.
Maverick, aborts his landing to go around and help his friend land his plane even though he’s flying on fumes. He pulls up on Cougar’s wing and says nonchalantly, “Any you boy’s seen an aircraft carrier around here?” He does his best to coach his friend and fellow pilot back to the deck of the aircraft carrier. If you haven’t seen it in a while, I encourage you to watch it tonight. Definitely see the first one before the next one hits your screen.
I could change Maverick’s words a bit and say, “Any of you gulls seen a gas station around here?” We have already had quite a bit more motoring than our original trip planning factored in and so the fuel calculation for just about ANYWHERE, let alone home is a little tight.
Before I get into the whole story, let me tell you what we had for dinner tonight. The baby bok choy was starting to show signs that it might be going - so I whipped up a spicy chickpea, baby bok choy, and asparagus bibimbap. We whipped up a shaved carrot and cucumber salad (mirin and black sesame seeds) and let that marinate - sweet and tangy. We had some roast chicken and I made eggs sunny side up to top some rice maker perfect jasmine rice. The greatest hits of the season from the 70’s played while we ate and enjoyed the sunset. The tropical heat has come out of the air and it’s really pleasant out. Cool enough that a blanket might be nice on the overnight watch.
Back to the drama.
So this morning after motoring for more than 30 hours, I started doing the math. I downloaded the latest weather files, did my speed/distance/fuel burn calculations, and realized… if the weather stays like the forecast shows… we aren’t going to make New York on the fuel we have. Don’t panic - there are options. Furthermore, we’ve got lifelines. We’ve employed some pretty smart weather folks (the good folks at Commander’s Weather and WRI to be exact) to support our routing choices.
Why two routers? Well, we are testing. I make a daily weather briefing and share it with the crew, but I won’t always be with this team. By bringing in the two routers we get a feel for their forecasting and communication styles to see what is the best fit for this team. Further, it’s good to have a couple of sets of eyes on tricky weather. If we all agree, we can soldier on with high degrees of confidence. If we don’t - then we have to ask what’s the reason for the differences of opinion.
Here is what I wrote this morning to one of our routers:
Good morning. I think we would like to order an intermediate forecast to help us make a decision about how to handle our light air challenge.
Actual winds have been under forecast as we’ve seen sub-6kts for almost the past 24 hours. This has put us in a bit of a fuel crunch. We have tracked slightly west of RL in an effort to greet the expected S’ly build and try and skirt the lightest winds we saw on our GRIB (GFS) downloads but to no avail. Our most recent GRIB pull has left us less than optimistic about the next few days, and so we are looking at options as well as considering long-term consequences.
The first option looks to be Bermuda. Roughly 535 miles from our current position. This is probably right at the very end-reach of our fuel supply if we had to motor the whole way. If we could find 15 hours of sailing in the three days it would take to get there, we’d be thin… but comfortable. Long term, we are seeing that a low may form and head towards Bermuda sometime after the 4th of June. This would make leaving Bermuda before its passage unlikely, due to expected headwinds and no desire to dance with a low-pressure system on that passage. Your thoughts on that would be appreciated as well.
The second option is Moorhead City/Beaufort, NC. Roughly 750 miles from our current position. We’d want 24-36 hours of sailing to be comfortable there. As we had been expecting S-SW’ly winds in the teens, this is viable… if that is real. But our last download made us second guess the reality of that option. If this option was possible, we’d be coastal from that point forward, including having the option to transit the Ches/Del. Bay to avoid offshore headwinds—or make our way outside in more favorable conditions; if even motoring.
The third option is the shortest and seemingly well within our fuel range, but not ideal for advancing us home—Marsh Harbor, Bahamas. Assuming some S’ly component is on its way, we should have reaching conditions from here to Marsh Harbor. It is only 450 miles, so we feel bullish on our fuel to make that. This would potentially still put us in the firing line of the long-term LOW; but likely give us some escape options, including making a US East Coast pause point. This is a distant third option for us, but if the outlook was it was motoring all the way to either Bermuda or Moorhead City… we might consider it as a conservative play.
Your thoughts and input on all of this are appreciated.
Thank you!
kb
We are looking at more or less the same information they are, so we speak a common language. Their computers and internet connections (as well as their training and experience) give them the ability to see more in the same data set so we waited for the response.
A few hours passed and the next weather file came online… They more or less agreed with our assumptions but gave us some hope that our read on the NC option was dimmer than it needed to be. This encouraged us to lean on this as an option and we had a full team meeting to talk about the pros and cons of each decision.
Here we arrive at a HUGE weakness of mine. For better or worse, I’m an optimist. I am an Olympic-level lemonade maker. Which can make me a poor decision-maker as I’m pretty happy with whatever.
So I put together a bunch of scenarios of what we would do if we went to the Bahamas (on to Charleston!), or to Bermuda (the perfect test of whether we want to return here in the future), or gamble on the long play (maybe it will be good enough we can skip NC and make the Chesapeake Bay… or maybe even all the way!)
While drafting all of this, we played cards and napped. Read books and we were even visited by a strange bird. To me, it looks to be a dove or pigeon… the kind you see in Bermuda. Not a sea bird. Maybe this is a sign that there is a secret wind field blowing birds off course and sailors home. The bird is still on our port spreader catching his breath… probably wondering where the heck we are going.
And maybe that bird was from Bermuda because this afternoon the wind filled in. We are beam reaching at Cape Hatteras and doing 7 knots with the first reef in the main. This wasn’t in the forecast, and I don’t want to spook it away so I won’t write too much about it. For now, we are grateful to have it and hope it stays as long as possible.
We are hopeful and pointed at a waypoint that leaves us options. We’ll save Bermuda and the Bahamas for another trip. Do a little wind dance for us and stay tuned for more!