ALONE OFFSHORE IN THE ATLANTIC and THIS HAPPENED _ Sailing in the Gulfstream _ Part 2

As Saoirse glides gracefully through the open waters of the Atlantic, we are now 400 nautical miles into our journey from Florida to Rhode Island. The original plan of a seamless 900 nautical mile offshore sail guided by the Gulf Stream's gracious current has taken an unexpected turn. A strong northly wind poised to intersect near Cape Hatteras, which is known for its tumultuous conditions, has led us to quickly alter our But our temporary harbor reveals an unforeseeing challenge. An inlet that will put an end to our thus far peaceful sail. Good morning. Welcome to day four of our sail. We should be reaching North Carolina tomorrow, probably about this time. We did lose all wind last night so that kind of brought back our schedule a little bit. The north wind that we were speaking about is coming in still Wednesday morning. We might get a little bit of it Tuesday night. But the whole reason is that you don't want to be in the Gulf Stream that's going about three and a half knots north with a north wind hitting you. That doesn't cause for good conditions. A lot of chop. It's supposed to be really gusty. So we are going to just tuck in for a couple days into North Carolina. When we lost all wind last night, it did end up picking up but we motored quite a bit and when we went to go pick up the sails, Poe found a, I think it was a tern, I named him Tommy, on the bow sitting by the headsail and we didn't want to disturb him so Poe picked him up and brought him all the way back and he sat on the stern all night long. He left early this morning and then sadly, um, what did I name her? Sally? What did I name her? What did I name the bird? And then sadly Shelly left shortly thereafter. But it's fun having animals on board. Poe was saying that because there was no wind is probably why they were resting because it's probably just as hard for them to fly without wind as it is for us to fly without the wind. And now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that's when Finnegan landed on our boat. We were sailing across Jamaica. What are you looking for? I just cleaned it this morning. There's no bugs. Sorry bud. I'm actually looking forward to getting into North Carolina and checking out, I want to say, I really hope we're saying it right, Ocracoke. It's supposed to be a cute little town. Our friends, Tanya and Chris, are there with their son Corbin. So hopefully they'll be able to come down and visit us. I just cleared the fishing line of seaweed and then I noticed a whole bunch of fish jumping in the background. And I put it in and as soon as I put it in something hit it. And it's strong. It's pulling the heck out of it. So I had to call Bo up. Oh wahoo. Be a wahoo. But I probably it's a mahi thing. Holy moly. Literally, I literally just cleared it and put it in there. I'm like shaking. Oh man. I have to bring it to the side. I don't want to get them too close until you're ready because I don't want them to run under the boat. It's fine, go ahead. I need the line. Do you need me to loosen it at all or no? No. I'm gonna unhook it as soon as you get enough on there. Is that good? Yeah, I'll leave it on just in case. I think it's gonna be a good enough. It's like we're having a baby. I think it's gonna be a tuna. It's gonna be a big freaking mackerel. It's a tuna. It's a tuna? Yeah. Big one? Yeah. Okay, where do you want me? Keep pressure on it. Keep pressure on it. Just keep it there. Oh wow, is that a yellowfin? Can you bring it up or what do you want to do? Yeah, bring it up. He's a big one. Oh, he's humongous. He's like as long as you, your torso. I mean, I'm not even holding him out. How heavy do you think? He's like five pounds? Oh my gosh, for sure. Tuna tacos for dinner. So I was about to store these, but I wanted to show you guys these things. Somebody got us these, one of our viewers, and they are amazing. Ida Tech. I'm gonna include it in our kind of things that would be great for a cruiser gifts guide in our Amazon store, so you guys can check them out too. But I mean, obviously even for your house because they're really durable. These are the best ones that we've ever had. We've had a couple different brands of these. They're not as bulky as the ones we've had in the past and they're just super simple. Except for don't put boiling water in them. We learned that lesson. But tuna steaks Crushed me. Manual battle stations. P5. C7. Hey, you're cheating. I'm not cheating. You sunk my battleship. I won. I thought you were saying I won. I did say I won. I think you're switching it up on me. I'm not. I have D3 marked. It's not what you said though. I said D3. H8. Hitting sun. I almost needed sun. Cheater. You're moving your ships around. All right, it's time to drop the sails o'clock. So we're gonna go ahead and drop the sails, let the current take us. They're getting beat up anyways and instead of running the power down on our motor because we're gonna need it to get into Ocracoke. So headsail and mainsail are going down. Yeah. They're so blue. We're just rocking around with no wind. We're about 70 miles away from our anchorage and we're just doing about three knots in this gulf stream. So we're gonna slowly work our way up. We got time. If we were actually motoring or sailing, we'd get there too early. We want to hit it just as high tide's happening. That way we can one, see and two, try to get as much water under the keel as possible because the depths to get into the Ocracoke inlet, it's a little shallow. So we don't mind just bobbing around for a bit. We're actually gonna enjoy a tuna poke bowl. It's just raw tuna, sesame seeds, and some spices, and a little bit of this seaweed. What is it called? Nori. And we're just gonna chill out. Oh my god, he's right under the boat. He's totally looking at us. dolphins. That was absolutely breathtaking, mind-blowing. All the adjectives. It was funny because we were seeing how pretty the sunset was and we're like, oh let's go and watch the sunset. And when I got up here to start filming, I could see little circles like something was in the water and up pops a dolphin. Wow, they were everywhere. But now it looks so eerie. I'm waiting for Johnny Dup to pop out in like a pirate ship or something. You can't even see the horizon. It's crazy. Did you get the shot? I got the shot. You've got to be joking. I was just out here taking video of the moon. Bo said there's some ships on the horizon over there. So he wanted to turn the spreader lights on. And our buddy popped up. He's right there. That is hilarious. Shelly, is that you? Nobody can see me. Camouflage. Hilarious. What are you doing? I wonder if Tom's back up on the sail. Yeah, Tommy's probably up front. Tommy the turn. Unreal. I can't see his green light, right? Yeah. Well, what's their heading? 245. How far are they from us? Four and a half miles. I shut off, like we're not, we're just drifting right now. So like they're going 12 knots, so they should be able to pass around us. Yeah, that'd be fun. I turned the light on so they could see us better. But I might hail them, just let them know we're over here. You can literally see these guys' lights in the water, like more than the moon. Hello. Did you say it was Norwegian? All right, nighttime update. We turned on the motor just after sunset because we knew we needed to kind of start making tracks towards the inlet entrance. I went to bed and then at some point Bo put up the head sail in Maine again. We're full sail, 150 full Maine, and we're piping right along about five-ish knots. We are pretty close, about 30 knots of miles from the entrance. Did I just say that? I don't know. But I want to get there sooner than later because who knows what the wind might do. I can slow down closer too. We are about, it's showing kind of about seven hours going this speed, but it's a starry night. There is a lot of lightning on over land, but it seems to be staying there. The stars are shining. It's a beautiful night, and this is actually probably the quote-unquote roughest night we've had. The seas are a little bit choppy, but still really small, so that's nice. But yeah, so I'm just gonna sit back and keep an eye on the horizon, make sure these storms don't head our way, and maybe start slowing down probably about five nautical miles in beforehand. That way we can time it just right because we need to be there at noon. I'm sure we mentioned this because it's a pretty sketch entrance, a lot of shoaling. We do draw only three nines, so hopefully that will help us. But we're going to try to kind of keep visuals, and I even asked Beau if maybe we could fly the drone to check it out. So we'll see. But we do have some waypoints for the entrance that Dave, our ground team, has given us. But yeah, we are going to be there soon. Update out. Brandy out. Much better. So the wind shifted on us, and it's directly on our nose going into the anchorage now, so we had to really bump up the motor, hence the generator running, because we need to have power to go through the actual anchorage. So we didn't want to run out. We could probably get by without it, but it's just kind of a safety measure that we're doing. So we are getting all the maps ready of how to get through. The Army Corps of Engineers actually plotted some spots just last month. Dave sent us those, and then we're looking at the Google Maps. So we have this one tiny little bitty sliver of going through. So Beau's thinking about launching the drone when we get closer, and then we can kind of make sure that we're good to go. But that one little one little spot that we have to transition is, I mean, sand on one side, sand on the other, and 8B trench. So should be fun. Shouldn't be stressful at all. Oh, I say once we get within like two miles from the buoy, I can fly the drone. Which buoy are you talking about up here? Maybe that one right up here, like right in here. When we get close to the buoy. Okay, maybe down in here so we can turn the autopilot on. Yeah, that's fine. We are super close to shore. It's pretty nerve-wracking going through these cuts because there's a lot of shoaling in this area, and there's, I don't know, they got waypoints, but they're just kind of wonky. You're really close to shore with the waypoints. But Brandi's doing a good job. We haven't seen anything lower than, what, 11 feet? Yeah. Nothing lower than 11 feet. So we're coming up on this red marker, and then we gotta take a 90 degree on that. I'm not nervous. I'm not nervous. I'm not nervous. Hair ready status. Serious, serious hair. Well, we slowed way down, huh? I slowed this way down. Well, yeah, and the fact that you dropped the main. It's 20 feet right here. Like, this whole thing is breaking. It looks like you go kind of right there. Where that spit comes out? Yeah. But I don't know. You got the map. Is it just me, or is it, like, breaking the whole way? Follow your map, hon. I'm going to the waypoint right now. Okay. I'm gonna start hitting shallower water soon. It's been 11 feet. It's making me drift, though. Are we through it? No, love, just started it. Eight feet. So that's what I need to stay at, eight feet. Eight one, eight six. Heading to the marker. Eight five, eight seven. All right, I'm at the marker. Nine six, nine five, nine four, nine seven. Now I'm heading to that spit. Supposedly it's ten. Still good? Yeah. Still eight? Seven three, seven one. All right, I, can you see where I'm going? Do you? I can't see on this thing. It looks like you're headed breakers. Shallow. Like, maybe go up. Love, it's showing me right here. I'm at five five. What am I doing? I don't know. What's the map saying? That hopefully in the next 10 seconds I'm going to be in 10 feet of water. Five four, five seven, five nine, five six, five five, five four. I'm hoping that this is just, like, deeper water hitting shallower water. Like, not too shallow. Five two, five one, four eight. I should already be in 10. Four five, low water, four three, four one, four two. Uh, was that a sitting? That was not sitting. Was it? Four seven now. Four four, four three. So look, there's a boat there. Four five, four seven, five two. We're gonna increase. So, okay, no, I think we're past it. I think this is where he's going. Oh my gosh. We did it, we did it, we did it, we did it. That's where the, the color map was. All right, now the ferries. Go baby, go, go, go. Our little electric motor did its job. Got us through that cut with no issues. Um, it was a little bit of a pucker factor. What'd you think? I'm still sweating. I think you'll be sweating for a while. I mean, the only thing that really made me nervous was the breaking waves. I mean, it just looked like it eddied, which I'm assuming is because the tide is going in and out, like they have a crossover. You can tell the difference in the water here. I can see over here, which is supposed to be two feet. And so we knew that back there wasn't going to be anything less than two or more than two, but. It was light, but it wasn't that light. Yeah. Which is still nerve-wracking. Anytime you see water semi-breaking, you know there's a shallow spot there, so. Yeah. I'm glad we're through it. We couldn't have timed that any more perfectly. They say to not come in with the ferry exiting. I see why. Yeah. It's humongous. Fat butt. It's like turning around. You gotta go that way. Look how cute! We made it. Exactly what I would envision. Since Bo and I left the States, we left straight from Florida and went down to the Caribbean, so we haven't been able to experience this sort of anchorage in our cruising career. So this is something different. We're still at one foot tide. Not really the season for people to be here. Hold on, where? Look how pretty that is! That's really cool, those little dolphins. That's the ferry dock right there. Oh yeah, that would make sense. Yeah, I can see why you want the ferry to come. Yeah, it's super. Well, it's just very narrow. Yeah. Tell me when you want me to bust a Yui. Down she goes. Yay! We made it to our first anchorage. There's no better feeling than being tucked into a safe harbor, especially with the anticipation of impending strong winds. We are postponing exploring this cute, charming Ocracoke until tomorrow because, as fate would have it, we just happened to be a short ferry ride from some of our best friends in the entire world who are currently living in Hatteras. So today, we're gonna go see our friends Tonya and Chris. We bought out the whole boat. Look at this charter boat just for us. Actually, they just dropped off 100 people, eight dogs, two bikes, and we're going back to Hatteras and there's only us two. There's Saoirse. I can't believe we're the only two on here. I'm gonna be sailing this in a few days, so we got to get the scope it out before we actually get out here with Saoirse. If this guy can fit in it, we can fit in it. He's going 30 knots right now. We won't be doing that. They have a pony pin. They have a pony pin. The famous horses. Just act natural. Chris and Tonya have the same vagabond hearts as we do. They have been land yachting all over the US in their RV with their son Corbin. These guys are like family to us and we are so grateful that the wind blew us in here so we could see them. Thanks for watching. Subscribe if you haven't already and be sure to stay tuned as we continue our sail north. Only 500 more nautical miles to go. What could possibly go wrong?