Tuesday June 19, 2012
It's still too early to say for sure when we'll cast off, 'cause the weather forecasts don't quite go that far out, but here's the tentative plan.
I'll pick up the crew in Washington DC on Saturday and bring them down to Deltaville that evening. We'll spend the mornings and early afternoons of Sunday and Monday sailing on the Chesapeake... doing man overboard drills, playing with the trysail and spinnaker and stuff. I probably won't actually switch over to the storm jib. It's more trouble than it's worth, but I'll bring it up on the bow and let everyone see it and talk through how to put it on if we have to. (With my roller furling jib I don't really need a storm jib, but I have one just in case my jib gets shredded for some reason.) I haven't decided whether or not to actually deploy the parachute sea anchor. On the one hand it would be very good to have the crew actually deploy the sea anchor once under calm conditions before they need it under bad conditions, but on the other hand I don't want to pack a wet parachute in the boat for our long journey. We might just bring that out on the bow and talk through it without actually deploying it for real.
We'll spend the late afternoons and evenings of Sunday and Monday at the grocery store getting provisions.
If the weather is good then on Tuesday we'll head out. If the weather doesn't look so good, then we'll wait until it does look good.
I'll take lots of pictures during the practice sailing that we do on Sunday and Monday and e-mail them to you before we cast off for real, so that you can have something to put in your newsletter after we leave VA but before we arrive in the Bahamas. While we're underway you'll have the daily SPOT update. When we arrive I'll send you photos that we took along the journey.
Doug