Longest Passage, double-handed

Our passage was supposed to be 4.5 days, as we had approx 650nm to cover. However, the first two days were magical! We sailed with three sails (main, geneoa and stay sail) and averaged 200nm per day. Our average speed was 8.4knots. Now we had about 2knots of current helping us along, which was awesome. We were both at awe as Lorena has never moved so well! We even managed to run the code zero for all of 30-45 minutes.
We left at dawn April 29th and arrived nearing midnight on May 2nd.
We caught three mahi mahi in one day, and the following day a heavy skipjack tuna. The freezer is full, and Brian is happy, although he dropped the fillet knife overboard, nevertheless, he does a great job with just a kitchen knife.
Birds continue to join us on our journey. Not sure if I should be looking at it as a sign from God guiding our journey, or merely as Lorena offering a haven to tired souls.
Our path was supposed to end at Dry Tortugas, but we arrived in the morning and decided to stay in the Gulf Stream and proceed to Miami, as we were enjoying wind, speed and current. We even talked about going to Fort Pierce.
We have a friend, Joe Ricciardi, former Delta Pilot, who was following our trek, our land contact. He alerted us to a small craft advisory near Miami and when we checked the weather ourselves, we saw lightening and made a quick decision to divert to Key West.
The entry in, at 10pm, was scary! The main channel is marked, but it is difficult to tell the distance of bouys or which ones to head towards. We finally made it, around 11:30pm (May 2nd) with a full lunar torch guiding us past each hazard.
We dropped anchor, however, it did not set. Brian was adamant it was fine and we just needed to put more chain out… I was frustrated with that decision. The anchor alarm sounded twice in the night and Brian thought everything was fine. BUT, when we got up in the morning, we had slide 150ft… much too close to the rocks behind Tank Island.
We moved to a new location, behind Wisteria Island. We had friends, the ones who had done the convoy with us, we arrived to Key West the day before (Chris and Fiona on Carioca), but sadly we didn’t see them before they left again.Leggi altro