Fun day at West Palm Beach Anchorage.
- Alebrije
- Affection
- Eximius
- Ohana
- Dalecarlia
- Deli Mali
- Imagine
- Cookie Monster
- Pegasus
Our sailing experience on a 1987 Catalina 34 which we named 'Eximius' which google showed as the Latin translation for 'Special' We hope that our posts will help others looking to take their boat beyond the local waters as well as provide entertaining reading. I'm a Brit, so my view of entertaining may not match yours ;) See you on the water. The Journey Starts Here Paul
As mentioned in the last post (click here) We're anchored at West Palm Beach Florida.
The current is vicious here! We've seen 4 knots in the direction of the tide, right now it's flowing southerly, We're anchored with two bow anchors and one stern anchor and they are holding well. The good news is that we're in 9' of water. The Stream does give concern when taking the dinghy out into that stream, we have to be able to do at least 4 knots, "Special's Dink" should be fine, we have a 4hp outboard and it's only an 8.5' Mercury dinghy, doesn't get up on the the plane but clips along nicely if only 2 people on board. So sorry folks dinghy trips in Special's Dink doesn't look like an option.
Ohana arrived at nearly dark last night and after dinner at Bradley's they anchored between the two city docks with several other boats. Meanwhile, as the tide changes we just hung about secure on our anchors. The only other downside of being on the East side of the Waterway is the frequent crazies on their power boats churning up the waters and making Peggy wish she had taken a dramamine. Lumpy.
lt rained briefly around 4:30 this morning and I had a mad dash about the boat to close the ports and hatches which were open to keep the boat cool. It only lasted about 10 minutes and we opened up the main v-berth hatch for the welcome breeze. FYI, I attach a spare halyard to the bow of the dinghy when it's on deck and we're at anchor so that I can raise it enough to open the v-berth hatch which is below the dink.
The Bow line that we set between Affection's Stbd side and Eximius' Port side was stretchy, so when the wind picked up a bit last night the two bows were able to wander apart a few inches and the stretch caused a shriek from the line each time it tightened. Jeff & I were both on deck and we changed it out for a larger non-stretch dock line and ran it through a Chock on Eximius to reduce the load on the cleat. Worked great, the rest of the night was peaceful.
During breakfast, Peggy & I discussed our plans for the day - not many - I need to work on the club's Newsletter, I have a couple of projects that I could get done. Hope to be able to discuss some details of upcoming club events with the Cruise Committee (they're captive audiences :) ) and send out some emails to family and friends. Peggy is going to get in some practice and I'll do some chin wagging. Later today several other boats are going to arrive. Dalecarlia, Imagine, Cookie Monster, Aireze and a couple are arriving by car. So maybe a bit more chin wagging.
See you on the water. Oh! Today's pics:
Neighbors - Affection and Alebrije |
Looking North. City Docks are on the left (West) side. |
HISC Memorial Day Weekend Cruise to West Palm Beach.
After spending Thursday night on Lake Boca tied up with Affection (Jeff's Boat ! ) we pulled anchor at 07:30 in order to get the 07:40 Camino Real Bridge opening while Affection motored out of Boca Inlet, his draft is just 3' ours is nearly 6' and Boca Inlet is too stressful for us.
07:43 we passed Camino Real Bridge and motored the 20 minutes to Hillsboro Blvd Bridge, then it was a long slog of 60 minutes against the current down to the Hillsboro Inlet Bridge, by the time we were ready to pass the bridge, Eximius was pretty well dressed for the Day, Sails & Sheets ready, fenders all inboard, Lines secured, ready to hoist the sails.
Just as expected, the wind was very light as we navigated carefully out of the inlet and avoided the shallow area on the North side of the Inlet and 'gonna get you' shoals on the South side of the inlet.
We turned to 045º with the intent of trying to reach the Gulf Stream under motor while the wind was so light. We did raise the sails but they pretty much just hung there. By the time we were a mile and a half off of the shore, we were feeling the Stream pushing un north. Engine given a rest and we trimmed the sails. With less than 5 knots of wind, we were barely moving through the water, just 2knots. But the Gulf Stream was dragging us North an additional 4 knots! Expecting the wind to pick up before lunch time, we stayed on course.
Soon the wind picked up to around 7 knots, and our GPS speed was 9.5knots WooHoo! The Sea was very steady and it was an easy sail. The Autopilot managed just fine once we had some speed through the water.
The only issue was that the course that I imported from Fastseas.com had some issues. Last night I had reviewed the route on fastseas.com and switched the Start and Finish over so that we could see what the return trip would be like on Monday. Totally forgot that I had switched the Start an Finished and proceeded to export the route. Once it was on a chip, we imported it on our chartplotter then set the GPS to follow the route.
Sounds ok, except that I had not remembered the switch over. So initally the chartplotter reported that we would reach our destination by noon. That was great, a bit unrealistic, but great. As we proceeded, the arrival time got later and later.
Duh!
Once I realized the problem, I simply deleted the route and set a route to arrive at Lake Worth Inlet.
All of a sudden, our late night arrival was now around 2pm.
We're sailing Eximius up to Lake Worth this weekend and using fastseas.com for weather routing for the first time (Paid Subscription)
First learnt about fastseas.com from a sailing vlog on YouTube. Looked pretty interesting so tried it out first as a freebie account but quickly upgraded to a paid subscription.
So, in preparation for our trip to Lake Worth here's what I did.
Once logged in, I created a new route with a start and finish position. Both of those have to be on the water! Duh. In this case I setup a start that was 3 miles off of the Hillsboro Inlet. Chose that as we need to pump out beyond the 3 mile limit before arriving at lake worth for a few days stay.
I set the parameters for the wind speed at which I would turn on the engine and the ideal wind direction off of the bow. With all of parameters set. I chose the Start date and time then just click on the Calculate Route. A few seconds later I got the image shown above. The yellow line shows the recommended route that also includes wind direction and speed during the trip and it includes the current conditions along the route.
If I play the time line, the route is shown in action as the time passes our departure time and our position along the route as time passes.
On this particular trip, with the weather forecast 4 days out, the route shows us moving towards the coast and tacking to make the best speed with the wind at the time of transit.
This is good, but it shows the route on the computer and I would really like it to be shown on my chart plotter - good news is that it's doable!
Now that I have it downloaded, opening homeport I can import the route
Selecting the downloaded file and clicking on Open, imports the route data into homeport
Now to view the route in homeport
Now the route is shown in Home port, all of the route waypoints are displayed.
Next I need to copy them to a Micro SD Chip to transfer them to my Garmin 746xs Chartplotter on the boat.
In practice, I would do all of this on the morning of the trip so that it is based upon the most up to date weather forecast.
ImagineRabbitAlebrijeDalecarliaAffectionDuetPegasusEximius.