Heading South for our Fourth Winter Season

Above picture: Requisite shot of Race Rock as we leave home waters heading south

While making preparations to sail south for the winter we were delayed by an international shipment of our new Aquanaut Dinghy. It was very disappointing to finally have the dinghy arrive, unboxed and damaged. We can’t even assemble it to see what it looks like. Oh well, we’ll take it with us and have replacement parts sent to Hampton, VA.

Passage: Groton to Hampton

We finally set sail from Groton on September 29th. So much fun to have Alex, Jenna and Nani motor with us to the club fuel dock for final fuel and water top up. We almost sailed away with Nani. She loves the boat and wanted to come back aboard.

Our weather window suggested an easy run straight to Hampton, Virginia. So we headed for Montauk, Long Island then south, south west. We keep four hour watches on Lone Star. We quickly settled into the routine and rhythm of life at sea.

We lost all wind for our final day, so motored quite a bit. This was a 357 mile journey that took 66 hours. We had the engine on for 31 hours. Yeah, it’s warmer in Hampton than it was in Connecticut!

Deja-Vu

As we approached the north anchorage near Hampton town dock, we both commented that the only other anchored boat looked like an old Prout Snow Goose 34, like our first cruising boat.

We assembled our Porta Bote dinghy and rode around her and discovered it was our exact boat that we sold in 1992. We could see many of the changes we made to her still there. Unfortunately, no one was aboard. Wow! So cool to see her again. Looks like she has some nice upgrades, like a cockpit awning, and painted coach roof. Not bad for a 1976 built boat.

We verified the shipping address here, ordered some parts and sailed north to Deltaville, VA to meet up with cruising friends. We enjoyed several cookouts and musical jam sessions. We met Steve who’s a really good flute player. It’s always good to meet new and old cruising friends.

After a trip to a local clinic, it was suggested that Anita get to an Orthopedic Hand Surgeon as she may have a ruptured tendon in the palm of her right hand. After a week of fun, we sailed back to Hampton to be closer to the specialist. Uber rides are plentiful and reasonably priced here. Thankfully, this was the wrong diagnosis. Trigger finger and a tiny cyst were treated with a cortisone shot. Pain was gone in another day. Anita started exercises to improve dexterity and hopefully avoid future surgery.

This is a fun time to be in Hampton: two organizations have Caribbean rallies that depart from here. We are members of the Salty Dawg Group, but have not yet joined a rally.

Emergency

One breezy afternoon, we were on shore. Tom stopped to chat with the crew on Flying Fish, the trimaran pictured above. Someone ran to their dinghy announcing, “my boat is dragging anchor.” Anita had just entered our dinghy, looked up and saw that Nero was dragging into Lone Star. Oh no!! “Tom, come quick!” By the time we arrived on Lone Star, Nero was across all three bows and we were dragging anchor too with the added weight of a big monohull. Soon we were pinned to dock pilings and tangling with an abandoned power boat in the first slip. We could not start our engine without bleeding the air from the lines. So we concentrated on raising our anchor; which of course had a jam, and fending off and giving dock lines to cruisers who were assisting via dinghies. Several dinghies pushed Nero most of the way off our bridle line. In order to get them off the final starboard line, we pulled the pin attached to Lone Star. Unfortunately, Anita called out as soon as it was free, Nero promptly spun up their propellor in the dropping line. Within a minute the captain of Nero was in the water in full wetsuit and cut the bridle line from the propellor. Then they quickly motored away and anchored. Four dinghies surrounded us and towed us to a safe anchoring spot and we dropped anchor as well. Then we bled the air out of the engine fuel line, started it, and set the anchor properly. I counted eight dinghies assisting us. What a great community of cruisers! We spoke with Nero’s owner twice, he felt responsible. He has a quarter sized divot where our bowsprit hit him. We have scrapes and scratches and a bit of damage to the Wind Pilot we think. Nothing major, phew.

Tom has been chasing the source of the engine air leak for about six months. If the engine sits cold for a while it won’t start because of fuel starvation. He completely changed the housing of the secondary fuel filter. He also recently tightened one of the bleed screws above that filter. Our fingers are crossed that the fuel system air leak is fixed now.

We missed the sailing window that the Salty Dawg boats left in during the last weekend in October. We needed to wait for one more vital package: our replacement Caribbean chart chip. The defective chip was delivered a week before. It took a while to convince C-Map to replace it. We hope to head to the USVI this winter with planned stops in Puerto Rico, perhaps the Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas.

So we wait for a weather window and continue to ready the boat for the next passage.