the forecast

Less than a week before we leave so I grabbed some more food while at the grocery this morning.  Raw spanish peanuts, banana chips and dried mango spears.   Divided them up in to a dozen cups then poured each cup in to a zip lock snack bag.  This is the kind of snack I enjoy late morning or late afternoon.  Bruce likes the snack crackers and beef jerky, we'll have that on board too.

Also took a look at the seven day front forecast.  Accuracy this far out is far from certain, but I'll be watching this page as we get closer to see what we can expect.  It really doesn't matter a lot.  Being out there from seven to ten days means we will see at least one full cycle of weather - warm moist air from the south being pushed out by a (relatively) cooler mass of dry air from the northwest, the mixing of the two possibly bringing some rain and thunderstorms.  And then a couple of nice days while the humidity builds again.  We've got the gear to deal with all that and will take it as it comes.
The last time we sailed together we drove down Hwy. 17 to Harkers Island on a rainy day.  We left Chesapeake in a light mist, about sixty miles down in to North Carolina is was a heavy downpour.
I had never expected to use the bilge pump with the boat high and dry on a trailer but there I was in a gas station parking lot somewhere north of New Bern pumping out the boat.  Got some strange looks from the truck drivers.  (This was a lesson learning event on the trip, the first of several.  Since the boat wasn't going to be in the water that day I had not snugged down the waterproof ports, particularly those under the seats in the aft cockpit.  The heavy rains put a couple of inches of water in the boat, some of which got in to the storage areas.  Always snug down the hatches and to bag the gear, even if kept in a waterproof (supposedly) area.)
That next day we sailed out of Harkers Island Fishing Center in the rain, thunder rumbling in the distance.  By midafternoon is was blue skies.

What kind of weather can we expect?  Rain, sun, wind, no wind, hot, humid, cool, dry?  All of the above I suspect.

Steve

a well-fed crew is a happy crew

Less than two weeks until the trip so it is time to start thinking seriously about food. Above is a photograph Bruce shot of me fixing dinner on Core Sound. Meals, particularly after a long day on the water, can be a highlight of the day. For dinner I had always used a combination of boiling bag rice (cooked in the pot on the right side of the stove) and onions, peppers and fish (salmon or tuna in a foil packet) grilled on a griddle. Bruce, when he joined me in the fall of '07, saw some room for improvement. He hasn't done much sailing, but he has done a lot of camping and has experience with camp meals. He'll be taking charge in that area.
All spring I've been tossing an extra item of two into the grocery cart for the trip. This past weekend I did a little census to see what we've got. Here's the count (this is for a trip that will probably take, depending on wind and whimsy, 7 to 10 days).

• 24 breakfast bars (a variety of granola and other high fiber bars)
• 32 fruit cups - mandarin oranges, peaches, pears, tropical fruit mixture
• 14 tuna fish and cracker lunch packs
• 3 asian dinners in boxes that include noodles, sauces and chopped peanuts or something along those lines
• two boxes of cous cous
• 4 packs of instant mashed potatoes
• 1 pack of spaghetti
• 1 pouch of pasta sauce
• 4 foil packs of salmon/tuna
• 1 boil in bag rice
• 2 heater meals (self heating meals that come in handy when I'm too tired and/or wet to mess with cooking.
• two cans mixed nuts that will be divided up in to zip lock snack bags
• big box of raisins that will be divided in to snack bags
• bottle of olive oil
• bottle of Cajun Sunshine hot sauce
• bottle of blackened redfish spice
• bottle of olive oil
• 20 packs of those little peanut butter snack crackers

That will be the basis for our food. It may seem like a lot, but it doesn't take up much space and there is plenty of room in the watertight storage areas under the thwart on Spartina. Items above that are in boxes will be taken out of the boxes and put in zip lock bags. Different groups of food - main courses, side dishes, snacks - will be grouped together in two-gallon zip lock bags or one of the one gallon plastic jars. Each evening we'll do a mix and match to see what looks good for dinner that night. As we get out the food for dinner each night we'll also pull out food for breakfast/lunch/snacks the following day. We'll have plenty of onions and peppers on board, they reside in a net hammock up under the foredeck on the starboard side.
Our biggest change this cruise will be the addition of meats and sauces - that's what Bruce will be taking care of once he is in town. We'll use a soft cooler and dry ice to keep things fresh (don't know how well this will work, but we'll find out). Bruce says he has a camp stew he wants to do the first night. It involves beef, several veggies and wine (normally there is no alcohol on the boat, but we'll take a small box of wine along for cooking purposes). It takes some time to cook, he says, and that is fine as the first day is a short sail from Engelhard to Wysocking Bay. Plenty of time to relax, get organized and enjoy the smell of a nice stew cooking away.
The other fresh food we hope to have available is fish caught along the marshes. Those are filets from a nice speckled trout that I caught on Caffee Bay near Swan Quarter. Grilled with onions and peppers and served on top of the rice with juice from a fresh lime, it was a great meal. I have fished off of beaches and power boats for years, but I'm still learning how to fish off of a sailboat. It takes a little practice to get the boat in the right spot, and it takes some experience to recognize the right spot. Speckled trout and puppy drum (called redfish on the gulf coast) will be the fish we are after.

I've sorted through my fishing kit to get ready for the trip. I don't take too much gear, maybe a couple of dozen soft lures that are slid on to hooks with 1/8 oz. lead heads. I'm trying out the Storm lure on the left for the first time this trip. It is a larger soft lure (as opposed to the hard bodied mirrorlures and such) with two treble hooks. If you look close you can see that I have pinched down on the barbs on the hooks. With a fish flopping on the line I want to avoid getting myself snagged. Last time I did that it took a doctor and two nurses to get the hook out of my hand.

Air and water temperatures on the rise the fishing is certainly picking up. I keep an eye on the fishing reports at Cape Lookout Charters to see what is happening down there. Fishing looks good, so maybe there will be trout or blackened redfish on the menu.

-Steve

...money for nothing, get your charts for free

Very cold and rainy here, chance of snow Monday.  Haven't achieved much.  But I did come across a great website on the resources page of the OBX130.  It is NOAA's Nautical Chart Online Viewer.  Here is the link for the Atlantic Coast page of charts.  I did not know they were out there.  Plenty of daydreams in the charts.

At top left is a detail from Chart 11548, Pamlico Sound Western Part.  It shows Fisherman Bay inside of Maw Point where Bruce and I might anchor on day seven of the trip.  Well protected from the typical southwest wind, Bonner Bay right around the corner offers protection in a couple of small creeks should the forecast call for wind out of the north. (I've got to think that those Bonner Bay creeks, with steep drop offs to 10 feet, ought to be pretty "fishy".)
The second photo down is a screen shot from Google Maps showing the same spot.  We'll carry a handful of Google Map or Google Earth images on the boat, a good reference when we get to a possible anchorage (plus the shoals and dropoffs visible on the photo give a hint for good fishing areas). 

I also did a test meal for the trip, seen at the bottom.  That is grilled lamb and polenta with roasted red pepper sauce.  The basil/garlic polenta comes in a tube and does not need refrigeration.  A box of red pepper soup (again, no refrigeration), with a few added spices,  is cooked down in a pot to make the sauce.  The lamb (or beef or chicken) would probably be sliced in to strips, frozen and kept in a soft-sided cooler with dry ice.  Improving our menu is one of the goals for the trip.  I'll experiment with dry ice once things warm up here.  But this was an excellent, very practical meal for the trip.   Who needs to rough it?

Less than a week until the start of the 2009 Everglades Challenge.   The Chief says they will be offering a challenge viewer so we can follow all the competitors (I think).  It's a great race and worth checking out.

-Steve

Stormy weather

This was a little thunderstorm that caught me out near Great Island on Pamlico Sound.  I had left my anchorage and was sailing east when I saw it coming.  I circled back near the island so I could find some protection if needed.  But it was the typical fast moving squall I've seen in the late spring.  A little wind, lots of rain and then gone.

Stormy at the office today and that storm will hang around for a while.  Another round of layoffs.  Some good friends, respected colleagues were let go.  I'm glad I've got this cruise to look forward to, gives me something to think about and take my mind off the economy.

I did start my work day in Newport News, across the James River.  So went over there early to visit the Bass Pro Shop and spend some of my birthday money.  Got some nylon pants and a couple of heater meals.  I like to carry two of the self heating meals on each cruise.  They come in handy when I'm just too tired to break out the stove or if it is raining and I've got the boom tent up  (there is plenty of ventilation with the boom tent, still I don't like to use the camp stove under it).  This is a complete self heating meal that uses water (included) and a chemical packet that heats the meal in about 10 minutes.  In this case it is potatoes and beef in bbq sauce.  The taste scale for this food on a typical day is about 4 out of 10.  But when I'm cold and tired and on the boat it jumps up to 7.   Add a cup of fruit and I'm very happy with the meal.

I'm glad to see Bruce is contributing to the blog.  He has a great sense of adventure and is open to whatever happens - a great attitude to have on an open boat cruise.

-Steve

odds and ends

That's the bow wave as Spartina crossed Pamlico Sound south of Swan Quarter last fall.  I always like the way the Pathfinder hull cuts through the water on a nice reach.  That narrow forefoot slices through the waves and pushes the water up and away from the hull.  You can also see the mahogany trim I've added to the the douglas fir rub rails.  The rub rails were pretty beat up after two seasons, particularly mid-ships.  So I added a layer of mahogany - both uppper and lower,  and, on top of that, about a four foot length of brass half oval.  So now the brass strips take the brunt of the wear and tear as I tie up alongside the docks.

I saw on Duckworks Magazine a piece by Perry Burton about building his Pathfinder.  He lives up in Newfoundland, Canada.  Wow!  Serious weather and sailing up there.  But I think he has picked the right design for small boat sailing in those waters.  For lumber he is, with permit in hand, cutting down trees and towing them across water to a waiting truck and then sawing them in to shape.  Not only is the weather serious up there, but the boatbuilders are too!  He wants to be sailing by next summer.  I'll look forward to following his build, but even more I want to see how the Pathfinder handles the ocean up there.

Cold with snow flurries here, so not much work with the boat.  I did find my paint at Jamestown Distributors, steel gray for touching up the cockpit.  Twelve bucks less than West Marine, but ten bucks of shipping.  I come out a little bit ahead, but not much.  I did buy a four pack of lithium AA batteries for the Spot satellite tracker (I wrote a piece about this nice little device for Chuck at Duckworks - I'll note here if he publishes it).  Most importantly this week I bought, cooked and ate a package of Simply Asia spicy kung pao noodles with sauce and peanut topping.  It was an excellent meal and will definitely make the provisions list for the boat.  Total prep time, including heating up the water, was less than 15 minutes.  Good meal, plenty for two people.  Add a little chicken from a foil packet and we'll be dining in fine style.

Making plans

Cold, grey and drizzly today.  I wanted to brighten my day so I dug out this photo from last September.  I was tacking out of Caffee Bay, a well protected spot with some nice fishing, tucked behind Marsh Island in the Swan Quarter National Wildlife Refuge.  Wind was light that morning.  I tacked out across Swan Quarter Bay.  The wind dropped to almost nothing and I considered motoring through the channel between Swan Quarter Island and Judith Island.  Very marshy area and I bet some good fishing in there.  But the wind kicked up about 10 a.m. and I flew across the mouth of the Pamlico River - dodging a small fleet of shrimp boats -  and anchored for a very pleasant afternoon in Mouse Harbor.  We should pass through some of these same waters, and maybe do a little fishing behind Swan Quarter Island, in May.

I did get an email from Bruce today.  He had looked over the proposed route and thought it was a nice way to go.   He's also been checking on potential menu items.  He mentioned the possibility of prepared meals in sealed bags, plus a camp stew made with vegetables and tinned beef.  Sounds great.  We are also looking at some Oriental sauces - I've seen some boxes at the grocery story with noodles and sauces, just add the shrimp, beef or whatever to make it a meal.  So we'll explore those options more as time goes on.  Soon we'll make a list of days and start building menus.  This is half the fun of a trip - making plans.