I met these amazing people during tropical storm Ophelia in early October. They came into Back Creek seeking shelter, and while I was adjusting the dock lines on Skyward, I lent them a hand with their dock lines. It was quite a windy day. That was the start of everything.
A couple of weeks later, while organizing the deck of Skyward, we got invited to relax and chat on Nikitoo. We took the kids and chatted about all sorts of things. It was a pleasant visit and we got along fabulously — that was all Rachel. It was at that point when after learning of our plans to some day set sail, they invited me to join the passage to Antigua which is the Salty Dawg Sailing Association rally to the Carribean. I recently became a member of the SDSA from my connection to Tiger Lily and Morgane of Sark.
I did a bit of research online with the boat and cleared the time with my boss at work, so we agreed to have me crew in this passage.
A Whatsapp group chat was set up for the whole crew to communicate in advance. That was very helpful as we had a lot of questions about departure and weather. The weather forecast was not giving clear and consistent results so a definitive departure date has not materialized. We listened to 2 webinars prepared by Chris Parker, and even he wasn’t able to draw conclusive recommendations.
On Saturday morning, I was prepping for the trip and noticed the bobbin on my Type 2 lifejacket Halvey-Roberts valve was dated around 2016 or earlier and I broke the green pin for the trigger. It was time to make a quick trip to West Marine.
I got a call from Nikitoo ironically while buying more things than I needed in the West Marine. As a side note: West Marine had an extensive selection of replacement parts for my lifejacket whereas Bacon Sails had a very limited selection and mostly for Mustang PFDs. Apparently a weather window opened up on Monday and we needed to ditch our plans to go sailing at home in Annapolis that day. Normal departure is Wednesday 11/1. So we started making plans to get me down to the boat on Sunday.
Another crew member agreed to drive down from Philly to pick me up to carpool, and then we drive towards DC area to pick up 2 additional crew for a total of 5 crew. We intended to get to the marina between 1-2pm but we stopped to eat a quick sushi lunch. I have all of my gear and clothing in 2 x 50L duffle bags.
Four of us drove to Harris Teeter and shopped for a couple of hours to provision. The store was very well designed and even had an elevator for patrons to shop on the 2nd floor.
We anticipate an 8-10 day passage depending on the weather. The list was prepared already to a very wise Admiral (I believe) and we had an interesting time stacking it all in the medium sized SUV! This is going to be fun crew.
We had a few tasks to get ready for a Monday morning departure. One was flipping the boat 180 degrees so we were pointing out the marina since we want to leave early.
While others put away the provisions, Captain and I worked on replacing a propane solenoid then I installed the jack lines. After a while we were all very hungry so we got off the boat and walked over to the Marriott restaurant for a great meal.
This is an amazing boat, and I am very lucky to be a stowaway crew member. These are wonderful people that have invited me along, and I hope to capture the best moments here. By the way, look at this tool organizer!
We had a very peaceful end to the evening watching a cruise ship depart and looking our past the marina. We set sail tomorrow and can be tracked at https://sdsatracking.com/fall2023. Search for Nikitoo.
The captain and I stayed up a bit chatting about the trip, Garmin devices and all sorts of boat things. Time to get some sleep to get ready for the Gulf Current crossing tomorrow.
The Loxodograph 