On A New Tack

Giving you more fuel tank options  One of the great things about catamarans is the redundancy in just about every system.  Fuel tanks are no exception and having a tank for each engine is nice, but it can be made nicer with a transfer pump or better yet, the ability to pick the tank that each engine pulls its diesel from. But why? There are couple of reasons that you may want to do this.  Maybe one engine is not working and you want to be able to go further by using fuel from both tanks for the engine that is working. If you are getting fuel from an area where this is concern about the quality, you can fill one tank with the suspect fuel, and if it in fact turns out to be bad, you still have the other tank that is known good to fall back on. We normally run both engines from one tank just so that it is a little bit easier to fill when the time comes.  This is a minor issue on our Vision 444, since the two fuel tanks are just in front of the base of the mast. The fill...

After a little over a week in The Abacos, we waited for a good weather day to make the trip from Little Harbour to Spanish Wells. Wednesday was the day. The wind was forecasted to swing to northerly, which meant an entrance through the narrow and exposed-to-the-north Ridley Head Channel would not be a great idea. We instead pointed for the further but safer Little Egg Island passage.  We were still with Umbono, Mira’s sister boat and her owners, Pierre and Kris.  We left at about 8:00 am with a light breeze from the west. Before long that picked up and we hoisted the main and Code 55 and motor sailed for an hour or so. Then the wind swung as forecast and built more. We put away those sails and raised the asymmetrical spinnaker with 15+ knots almost right behind us.  The wind continued to build to 18,19, with gusts to 22 knts. The asymmetrical is good to about 20 knots, but since we were downwind running, surfing down waves and generally hauling ass, our apparent wind neve...

Synopsys: I would be lying if I said it was smooth sailing.    Left Thunderbird We left Thunderbolt, a suburb of Savannah, around 10:00 on the 20th and started the two hour motor down the river to get to the Atlantic. We got a nice send off by dolphins on the way but quickly remembered how far Savannah is inland for such a major port. Anyways we made it to the Atlantic and the waves had certainly settled down from where they were a few days ago, but that's not really saying much, as we later found out that cruise ships were waiting in Freeport extra days for the weather to calm down! Waves were pretty short period and around 4-5' close to shore.  They got larger, but at least longer period as we got further offshore. They were hitting us on the beam, maybe a little forward, which does not result in a super pleasant sail. This was proved out because Abe became seasick soon after we entered this weather and went down to his cabin to rest around 1PM on the 20th.  Sue st...

 After being pinned down in Savannah for quite a while from bad weather, we finally have a good weather window to make the crossing from Thunderbolt, GA (suburb of Savannah) to Freeport, Grand Bahama.  We had a crew member join us yesterday, Abe.  He and his wife found out about a hull slot opening for a Vision 444, came to meet Sue and Mira in Oriental, NC for a tour and to hear about our experience, and decided to jump on the open hull slot!  Welcome to the Vision Family Abe and Anna! Abe has been on standby as we have all collectively waited for good weather.  That storm that came up the coast was creating 30-40 knt winds and 12-15 ft waves!  That is finally passed and the weather will be a little bumpy, but we have great reaching winds forecasted the whole way there.  Should make for a fast sail if that forecast proves true. We expect to arrive in Lucaya (the non-commercial port right next to Freeport) around mid-day on the 22nd.  We'll explor...

I forgot to mention in our last post that we are being joined by our friend Jared K. for the trip to Savannah. We’re glad to have him aboard and help with the watch rotation, but we’ll keep him slightly anonymous so that his work doesn’t find out he is working extra-remotely from home… After the unfortunately eventful trip down Adams Creek to Beaufort, we topped off our diesel tanks and Jerry cans at Town Creek Marina.  Shout out to them! Easy access and the price of diesel was under $4/gallon! The only down side, was that the nozzle was the diameter of my arm, making filling the Jerry cans a nightmare and even the main diesel tanks were no picnic.   We found a nice spot to anchor in Beaufort (great stop, by the way), visited the local brewery (of course!) and met up with the OCC Port Officer Diane to pick up the couple of items I had sent to her. We didn’t get to stay very long since the weather was looking to get more and more unfavorable as time went on.   We found (wh...

PredictWind Blog Entry - November 30th, 2023 Sidenote: I’m trying something new for our  PredictWind  Blog. Instead of having multiple places to post blogs, I’m going to start posting all of these to our regular blog site,  OnANewTack.com  and then link to that from the PredictWind Blog.  This will allow a couple of changes that I think will be beneficial.  First, the impact to you, the reader, hopefully will be trivial and have more positive than negative. You will have to click a link on the PredictWind Blog to see the entry, but at least now you will be able to comment or ask questions. For us, it’s just one place to write to! We are on our way South again after a great stay in Oriental. Friends Erik  and Jean ( Sailing Knot Shore ) put us up at their dock for the stay, which was very helpful given the very low temperatures and our fondness for not freezing at night.  I went up to PA for my HS Reunion, which was actually a great time, then a st...

Update: 7 Oct 2024 Before we get to the blog article, which I wrote in March of 2023, I want to let you know that I just found out about Google's NotebookLM, which is an AI powered tool that allows you to create a Podcast style audio piece based off of whatever input you provide, in this case, the following article. Here is a link to the "podcast" it created . Honestly, I'm blown away! Original Article follows... Introduction  I received a list of questions from Steve and Lisa Heidenthal (Hull #13, Sla'inte) about how we set up our boat, where we purchased things in SA and instead of just answering them for Steve, I thought I might as well make a blog article to also help others. All of these answers will be from the following perspective: sailing the boat over from SA to where-ever having the boat built with strictly 230V/50Hz power If the boat is being shipped, I wouldn't suggest buying much in SA, as you will have an easier time finding more options (and us...