The front came throiugh just after 8:00 PM last night and we’ve been seeing steady 40 Kt winds with 50’s not too uncommon. It’s been really uncomfortable and wet. We’re all fine and Double Wide has performed beautifully – I’ll provide more detail later. Our fastest recorded speed surfing down a wave thus far has […]
At 5:00 PM we reduced size of the mainsail by reefing it to about 1/3 of it’s normal size. Strange thing to do when the wind was only blowing 12 Kts out of the South West. But we have been studying the wind charts for a couple of days now and we were pretty confident […]
All is forgiven. The fight we had with the Mistress of the Sea last night is long forgotten. A good day at sea will do that! It has still been a bit rough, but the wind shifted further south today, allowing us to sail a close reach and make good time towards our goal of […]
I spent every spare moment over the last month fixing and replacing gear aboard Double Wide. I went over systems, replaced questionable components and tried hard to anticipate every possible breakdown. The sea has a way of showing me how inadequate and underprepared I am for sailing across the Gulf of Mexico. Yesterday was rough […]
We cleared the Jetties this morning at about 8:15 with choppy 4-5 foot seas and NNE Winds blowing 20-30 Knots. Fort Myers is 89 degrees from Port Aransas, so we were able to make good time on a close reach. While not ideal, I’d consider this good sailing. The temperature was a brisk 40-45 degrees, […]
The boat is loaded, fuel and water are topped off, and the crew is ready to go. Tomorrow (Friday, 1/3/14) we’ll leave for Fort Myers across the Gulf of Mexico. We expected to leave today, but the weather didn’t cooperate, so we held for a day as a front passed through with 30-40 Kt winds. […]
When Michelle and I bought Double Wide in 2005, we knew the navigation system, auto pilot, and radar was ready to be replaced, but I figured I’d bandaid the systems along until we were ready to do some more serious cruising. Over the years, we’ve made 8 Gulf of Mexico crossings and along the way, […]
It’s that time…the old B&G electronics package worked perfectly until about a year ago. Last fall, the wind instrument died. Then the bottom 1/4 of the cockpit monitor for the computer based chart plotter turned black. When we were crossing the gulf in the spring, the computer started rebooting at the most inappropriate times. I […]