We took a training cruise with John Kretchmer, a greatly accomplished delivery captain and author. We felt it would be good to get a long offshore passage under our belts prior to taking our own boat to the open sea.

Each of the crew signed up different reasons and came away with very different experiences. We wanted to see how John set his boat up, handled the crew and assignments and learn how he has done his transports. He has sailed over 250,000 nm and 24,000 nm on this boat in the last 2 1/2 years. He is definitely a free spirit and sailing gives him the freedom to live life on his own terms.

At 25, John sailed from New York, around Cape Horn, to San Francisco double handed in a 32-foot boat. This was done before GPS, and therefore navigated by Sextant. He has continued that philosophy on his boat today some 20 years later. His boat (Kaufman 47 - cutter sloop) is a very solid stable boat and John has kept the boat very simple. We checked our position several times everyday by Sextant and logged our position every 3 hours and charted our position at least every day. Noon log allowed us to determine our daily transport distance.

For us, we came away with much more confidence that we have the skills and interest to take on the distance cruising we have planned. We have refocused the build out of our boat to include much more self sufficiency than John's boat. Having a generator, wind turbine, solar panels (which John has), allow alternatives to running the engine to charge the batteries and a water maker to keep us free of shore water supply and associated problems.

The trip was really glorious, interestingly it began on the dock in Bermuda when they arrived just after dark on Friday night. After a little too much celebrating their arrival, the next morning we moved our gear aboard and somewhat kept ourselves out of the way while John and first leg crew cleaned up and re-provisioned the boat. Since they were behind schedule several days and there was a great weather outlook for the next several days, John pushed for a one day turn around. After a few small repairs and getting the boat re-assembled, we pushed off the dock, to go over to the fuel dock for fuel and water. By 5 pm, we had exited the harbor. John and two of the crew who were on the first leg were only on the island for 23 hours. Mallory and I and one other crew, replaced the other three crew who were flying back to their lives on the main land.

After clearing the reef that protects Bermuda and also caused the sinking of many a vessel. We hoisted sails and turned south. The journey had begun. Through the early evening we past swiftly past the southeastern shore of Bermuda. Quickly, it disappeared into the night as we took up watches. This evening and all into the next day we sailed deep reach in 10 to 15 knots of wind.

The watch system was two people on each watch 3 hours on / 6 hours off. The first watch 7 to 10 pm also did the sunrise watch 4 to 7 am. During the day, you can stand watch or relax as you desired, making sure there were at least one on watch at all times. This made for plenty of time to be rested and relaxed and ready if needed at anytime.

Day two, and three we entered the horse latitudes. The pilot charts, a collection of wind data over the past 150 years for each part of the oceans for each month indicated the next 10 degrees of latitude traditionally is calm, which proved out in our trip. From this data, Cromwell and others have developed routes and windows were weather is traditionally good for sailing around the world. It seems to us that weather is time specific but general trends are born out time after time. We headed mostly south to pick up the easterly tread winds, which blow though the Bahamas this time of year.

During this time of motoring through the western edge of the Sargasso Sea, you guessed it, we picked up sea grass in the prop. So we stopped, and John got out his snorkel and mask. Most of the rest of us took the opportunity to go swimming in 16,500 feet of water. The water was so clear and a beautiful royal blue. It was really freaky looking down in the water with the mask. The surface royal blue faded to navy blue to black below us. There was nothing below us than water. Fun but a little unsettling.

Finally, day four winds picked up and we were off and running in a consistent 15 knot breeze and calm seas, headed for the "hole in the wall", a natural formation at the eastern entrance to the passage between the Bahamas and the Abacos. Day six, we passed safely through the Northeast Passage.

Weather predicted NE winds 15 to 20 knots for our nighttime passage of the Gulf Stream, this puts the wind at odds with the current and makes for fairly lumpy seas. That and our very deep point of sail did not give us much relief from the confused seas. There was not much rest to be had as be boat rolled heavily from side to side.

Our watch, 1 to 4 am, put us through the shipping channel and the most traffic we had seen the entire trip. In fact, other than the passage through the Bahamas and entering Fort Lauderdale, we saw only 4 freighters the entire trip. We are about 20 nm out from Lauderdale and pointing about 30 degrees south of course (due west) to compensate for the Gulf Stream.

Mallory spots a freighter moving quickly southbound and we determine that it will pass safely cross our bow. Then Mallory spots a freighter northbound, this one we knew would be a crossing issue, and we wake John to ask his opinion. We watch the range lights (stern higher than bow) and as we approach each other, John starts the engine just in case we need additional maneuverability. Just then we notice that the southbound boat has stopped and seems now to be drifting into our path. I joked that we will be able to wave to the captain, which turned out to be far to true. As the Northbound freighter approaches, John has me steer south (to their stern) to show them our intentions, this was difficult because we were sailing hard by the lee in 8 to 10 foot seas. It was all I could do to prevent an accidentally jib. Finally, we did jib and ran south awaiting the freighter to pass. We are not at all sure that freighter ever saw us because once they passed the vessel adrift they turned out to sea and us. They passed, scarily close (within 100 yards).

Now we had to deal with the freighter that was adrift. Now we used the Gulf Stream and jibed back and reached northwest to Lauderdale. It was only as we passed 400 or 500 yards from that freighter that John noticed that the range lights on the freighter had been turned off and red over red lights were illuminated on the stern. He told us that means that the vessel is not under command, this could mean they are adrift or setting an anchor or just stopped moving for whatever reason. It was not until the next morning that we could see 4 or 5 freighters anchored outside the entrance waiting berthing.

Finally, John took the helm into the harbor as we could discern the other freighter lights from the shore lights. We dogged two outgoing freighters on our way into the fairly narrow channel, which leads to the inter-coastal waterway. We were happy to tie up to the nearest gas dock, while John called customs. Our trip took us 1000 nm in 6 days 12 hours or just over 150 nm/day.

All in all the journey, though fairly uneventful, was a great confidence builder and a truly beautiful sail.

It was odd entering Fort Lauderdale after hurricane Wilma. Only 1/2 of the buildings had lights nearly 2 weeks after the storm and none of the palm trees had fronds. Many building had extensive wind damage and lots of windows were boarded up or missing.

After staying one day, we wandered down to the keys and Key West for the better part of a week. We visited Larry and Diana (our past commodore) and were amazed at the amount of damage from the storm surge. Over 70% of Key west was under water and one of the guys from the yacht club told us that he had to tie off his car to prevent it from floating away. It was deep enough that powerboats were driving up and down highway 1. At the point we visited 60,000 yards of storm debris and damaged personal items had been hauled away and they had just scratched the surface.

Have fun,