Monday, June 28, 2010

making tracks



Boat and gear have all been washed down, cruising gear is back in the closet in the spare bedroom, Spartina is ready to go with day sailing equipment for the coming weekend and Bruce is on a flight home. I guess the cruise is over.

Above is nice photo of Spartina sailing wing and wing on (I'm guessing) day four of the trip. Thanks Paul and Dawn!

Below is the track for Spartina from Bruce's gps. We came within a percent or two of filling of the track memory. Total mileage was 187 nautical miles which translates into 215 statute miles, our longest trip by far. Our total is slightly higher than Dawn Patrol's 210 statute miles most likely because of a detour we took on day two through Ditch Creek and Dump Creek on the way to the Bay River while Paul and Dawn took the ICW to see their friend Graham Byrnes near Vandemere.



We've traded gps tracks with Dawn Patrol and it is fun to compare them side by side. Below you can see both boats tacking into the wind down Core Sound to our anchorage at The Swash. Spartina has the brighter blue track.
The boats (and crews) turned out to be very compatible. Dawn Patrol, a Graham Byrnes designed Core Sound 20, is a fantastic boat with a beautiful cat ketch rig. She is a bit faster than Spartina and I think she can point a little higher into the wind (credit for this goes to both Graham's great design and also to excellent sailing skills on board Dawn Patrol). Often times Dawn Patrol would be ahead of us on each day's journey, but somehow we would end up coming into the anchorage not too far apart.


Normally on cruises I spend part of the evening writing in my journal. But on this trip we spent many of the evenings rafted up side by side talking about the day's event with the Dawn Patrol crew (lots more fun than writing). I did do a pretty good job of taking notes - wind, weather, location - throughout each day in my waterproof notebook. I'll use those notes, plus the combined tracks of our trips and all the photos (which really make a pretty good journal in themselves) to put together a daily log of the trip. I just need to catch up on some rest first. In the meantime checkout Dawn's blog for her posts.

steve

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Outstanding, Steve. I checked Sandybottom's blog also. Sounds like a wonderful trip. Anxious to hear more.

Ken said...

I love the first photo in this post (and pretty much every other photo you've ever posted). The thing I like the most about the picture isn't the composition or the lighting, it's the wing-on-wing-on-wing :) When you're running not-quite dead downwind the sails just sort themselves out, don't they? :) You were heading just a few degrees to port of downwind?
Please keep the posts coming - I've admired the photography and narrative ever since Dawn mentioned your blogto me before the skeeter beater cruise. See you on the water sometime.

Steve said...

Ken,
you were along on the trip as much as you could be without actually being in one of the boats. Your name came up routinely and not just because of the outboard. Dawn talked about her sailing lessons and we all talked about your recent sail on the Neuse and Core Sound (Dawn had forwarded some of your comments to me). It sounded like a great trip.
As for wing and wing, we were trying to head downwind as directly as possible, but the boat (with centerboard up) will slide a few degrees port and starboard. The stronger the wind the easier it is to track directly downwind.
W and W worked out well here and I'm glad to see it in the photo, main to one side and jib and mizzen to the other.

Very good to hear from you. I'm sure we'll cross paths on the water sometime.

steve