Free Energy was in the Florida Keys for the winter until the beginning of March. I’m now in the process of moving her north. Unlike the past two years I’m not doing this is one long offshore sail, rather I’m hopping my way up the coast until I get to Charleston, SC stopping at various places along the way there for several days. Then in late April I’ll pick up crew in Charleston and do a non-stop sail to New England. As of two days ago I’d gotten to Fort Pierce, FL after stops of varying length in Rodriguez Key, Noname Harbor, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.
Three days ago I was in West Palm beach and I’d met a couple, who also have an Outbound 46 sailboat, and they mentioned they were going to do an overnight sail to St Augustine, FL. I’ve avoided solo overnight sails so far, but it put the idea in my head. So on the way to Fort Pierce two days ago I thought about sailing directly to St Augustine overnight, skipping Fort Pierce, Cape Canaveral and another stop, none of which I were particularly interesting to me. I hadn’t gotten a good night sleep the night before though, so decided it was a bad idea to do my first solo overnight sail without being well rested. So went to Fort Pierce and got a good night sleep.
The next morning and I looked at the weather models and realized the conditions would be good for doing an overnight to Saint Augustine as long as I arrived before noon the following day as the weather will turn ugly later in the day. So I decided to go for it.
Free Energy has an autopilot for steering so I don’t have to hand steer her when I’m underway. Typically I only hand steer when I’m entering or leaving a harbor and let the autopilot do its thing the rest of the time. I wouldn’t be able to solo sail, overnight or not, without the autopilot.
The biggest worry once you get out to the open ocean is typically not the weather (you just don’t go if the weather is going to be bad), it’s running into other boats. Free Energy has two systems for detecting other vessels. The first is radar, which works fairly well but is not perfect and can miss some small vessels (particularly wooden ones) or occasional mistake waves for other vessels. The other is AIS (automatic identification system). This system works great, except that it only detects other boats that also have the system. Both of these systems can be setup to start an alarm if they detect another vessel close by.
Between the autopilot, radar and AIS Free Energy is well equipped for solo sailing, however she still needs to be monitored so I can’t just sleep through the night. A friend pointed me to this blog post by Phil Haydon, who is a neuroscientist and solo offshore sailor and I decided to follow his advice and take 25minute naps through the night checking on Free Energy between naps. This worked well, it’s now 9am the following morning. I don’t feel completely rested, I feel like I got a poor night sleep, but I feel far better than I would have if I had not gotten any sleep. I suspect the effect you’ll notice the most is all the grammatical and spelling error this blog post will have. 🙂
The sail through the night was enjoyable despite the issue with sleep. The seas were about 4ft, but it was a swell so it didn’t feel rough and the motion of the boat was gentle in a way I like. It was also a clear night, and I was far enough offshore to have a clear view of the Milky Way. The wind was also very good during the night so I was able to sail through the night without the sound of the engine. Overall very Zen.
I’m about 1.5hours from Saint Augustine now and I have a mooring ball reserved for a few days and am looking forward to seeing the city for the first time.
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