Off shore to On shore

My first off shore experience ended up to be everything I  imagined it to be.  It was quite a whirlwind  to begin with.  I arrived at the boat on Monday.  I barely had a chance to find my bunk before we set sail so the time spent adjusting to my new home was happened to coincide with my intro to Atlantic crash course.  After arriving at our destination I was informed by the cook that I am apprenticing under that this was the roughest and most haphazard trip this boat has ever made south.  In my opinion a good experience in the end but I am glad I was not told this two days in.  We left New Jersey Monday November 15th for St Barth.  Being only my second day on the boat I spent the majority of it acquainting myself with " The Goose" as the crew calls it.

Watches were sorted out two hours every twelve hours, and as the cook I was given my choice.  I chose a 6:00 to 8:00 shift which by chance was the best shift I could have asked for.  my choice was confirmed to me on my first morning watch 6:00am on Tuesday when a pod of dolphins came leaping through the water on our bow.  Cruising  at 9 knots they had trouble keeping up with us and as a result there coming was as quick as there going.  The most I was able to capture on film was a small ripple on the water.  In my opinion not worthy of a space on this post.  Something I did find worthy was the grade A, East coast Atlantic sunrise.

The weather stayed calm with a light breeze until the third day out.  We had roughly 400nm under our keel and a storm front came across our path.  It was forecast to hit one day later but as weather forecasts go it was a day early and 20 knots stronger. The storm lasted 24 hours but the seas did not calm till the fallowing day.  With 15-20ft breaking seas there was no sleep for any of the crew that night.  In fact at 2:00am I woke to Wayne simultaneously running up the stairs and telling me we had two pumps failing and water in the bilge.  We were head into the wind and falling into each trough with a crash the shook the whole boat.  Our skipper Aubrey made the call to turn around to put the seas at our stern till morning.  Everything was sorted out by sun up.  We rode out the storm, replaced the pumps and turned back around the fallowing afternoon.  We lost about 80mi but made it up on a beam reach with the wind steady at 30kn off or port side.  Our record speed for the trip was 17.8kn!  A personal sailing speed record for myself and the boat.  As a sailer I was thrilled but as a cook in the galley it was a different story.  Let it safice to say, healed over at 20 degrees steady put a whole new angle on cooking for me.  Evan would be proud to know during my morning watch in35kn winds and 15ft breaking seas I was listening to the Montagues and the Capulets composed by Serge Prokofiev.  This is The "heavy seas" theme song.  He will also be pleased to hear that as I was barely managing to make mack and cheese for the crew, I was playing The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot in the galley.  The line on repeat in my mind was " when supper time came the old cook came on deck sayin "fellas it's too rough to feed you.""  I found it completely imposable to capture the size of any wave on camera so despite my multiple attempts, not one picture did them justice.
     The next day the dark clouds cleared and the sun finally came through.

The weather evened out to 25kn winds and 5ft seas which was comfortable in comparison to the previous two days.  The next three days were uneventful aside from a few tuna we caught on our way.
On day seven, our first sight of land was St Martin and St Barth close to 5:00pm Monday evening.

  We set anchor at 5:30.  With a bowl of beers on the chill, we all simultaneously pulled beer, cracked it and cheered it to a good week's sail.