Well actually 19,000 miles in 878 days, but who’s counting? Also 900 Days has a sad ring to it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read a book, though I’m sure the history channel has an hour documentary which is sure to have a few facts straight.
I’m packing the “large” suitcase. So far, it’s most full of those items that are hard to find in Europe and expendables that I use a lot of and are hard to find.
The orange line is 3/16” Amsteel Blue. I am modifying the lines on the paravanes birds.
Next week, I will be leaving NYC to return to Dauntless. I’m looking forward to it, as I am forward looking, though it is accompanied with a bit of melancholy, as it signifies change, trading my home in NYC for a home on Dauntless, thus having the life of a Traveller.
An ex-girlfriend once told me I was a gypsy, as I had just told her I was leaving Germany for California. Like most of my ex’s, they see the forest far better than I. Maybe if I just cut down those trees, I’ll be able to see better.
I’ll let you know how it turns out.
But back to Dauntless. There is still a lot of work to finish on the boat, but hopefully we shall be back in the water by early May, ready to start an odyssey that will not end until arrival in South Korea 850 days later.
We’ll start out slowly for the rest of this year and into next winter and spring, but as 2017 ends, it will be busy.
Oh, by the way, $20/day for 900 days, $18,000 for fuel alone. I have to start watching my pennies.
Yes, that has been me and in spite of my constant kvetching about being bored in NYC, I have spent this time planning.
For me planning is all about developing the main plan, thinking about the plan, thinking of every possible contingency, but understanding that something will happen that I never thought of.
Planning is all about probabilities. This is probable, but that is still possible. I avoid words like impossible or never. As Sean Connery said: “Never say Never”
Life itself is all about probabilities. The basis of Quantum Mechanics is all about probabilities and thus our world is probabilistic.
Certainly passage planning is about probabilities. One crosses the North Atlantic in high summer, July to mid-August, because the probability of strong storms, with winds greater than 40 knots is the lowest of the year. The North Pacific is similar, though with lighter winds, but a bigger risk of Typhoons.
First thing I do is check out Jimmy Cornell’s Ocean Atlas: Pilot Charts for All Oceans of the World
It’s the place to get newly published Pilot Charts with up-to-date reliable statistical meteorological information.
So, I like thinking of possibilities and preparing for those possibilities and then preparing for those things that I did not anticipate. 90% of my planning is done after I have the initial plan.
I hate surprises. I hate surprise parties. To me, there is no such thing as a good surprise. Oh, I may “hope” for things to occur: I hope I win this lottery; I hope this friend calls me, but to be surprised, is to be unprepared.
Once again I have been reading Cruising Galicia, published by Imray. A well done book, giving me many ideas. Unlike the past summer, when we had specific places we wanted to see, e.g. Tallinn, Riga, Gdansk, Helsinki, this year and next we will be more flexible. More willing to go where the wind pushes us and where we like the food, drink & people.
OK, maybe a bit premature; but I’ve never been accused of being too patient.
Leaving Ireland last May
When I get back to Dauntless on the last day of March, my real work will start.
90% of my work is really done in the planning process. Since the end of last summer’s cruise, I have been thinking of a number of minor modifications that need to be done:
The paravanes are number one. While crossing the North Sea, in moderate seas, (6-12’, 2-4m), I finally figured out that the birds were running too shallow, causing them to be inconsistent and significantly reducing their effectiveness. Instead of just replacing the fixed line with a line 5 feet longer, I will make it so that I would be able to change the running depth of the fish while underway. Default depth will be about 16 feet, but I will have the ability to let them out as much as another 15 feet, so if the shit hits the fan, they can run at 30 feet (9m).
Small electrical things to do, like USB outlets in Pilot house, and two cabins and salon. This will also include charger outlets for my laptop and 12v outlets (So I can turn inverter off at night).
Routine filter changes
Add a switch panel for fridge/freezer so I can isolate them, without pulling fuses. So the same for the solar panels.
The Dauntless Cruise Plan 2016 is pretty much set. I’ll make a posting of it in the next weeks. I’m really looking forward to spending an extended time in France, Spain and Portugal. The trip to Italy this Christmas just reinforced how much I like the culture of the Mediterranean counties.
Once we leave Ireland sometime in May, the idea of the winter haven, as we have done for the last two years, will be no more. While we will stop as nature and will takes us for days and even weeks, Dauntless will be heading south and west.
I also hope I can minimize the time alone; it’s simply not fun.
It’s been a terrifying two days, but knock wood, I have survived so far.
The road to New Ross
Crossing the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea was a piece of cake compared to driving on the left hand side of the road.
Shifting with my left hand feels as weird as blowing my nose with my left hand, in fact I really can’t.
A little road, a little town
Now, I have driven in left hand drive countries before, UK, Scotland and Ireland. Years ago, when I had my own right hand drive in Europe, I found it easier to drive that car on the left, since it allowed me to concentrate on staying on the correct side of the road.
Though coming upon a traffic circle, round-about in England, I still had a tendency to go right without thinking if there was no other traffic to remind me.
The most perilous times are right hand turns and pulling out of driveways. Both of those situations have found me close to catastrophe, as I pulled up to the street, looked left, saw no cars approaching and then proceeded to let the car roll forward as I looked right and turned all simultaneously.
Only fast feet on the brakes averted a head on collision as the on-coming car flashed by.
New Ross, Ireland coming up. Yes, it is two way street.
Nowadays I visualize where and how I am getting there with each turn practiced in my head. I use the same rules I have used since last year in Ireland as a pedestrian, look both ways twice before taking step into the street.
I’ve done the same with the car the last two days.
With only tomorrow’s early morning drive to Dublin and the airport, my odds are looking good. But I know the numbers and the reality is that the two-hour drive tomorrow is far riskier than what we have done or will do in the coming months, years and miles in Dauntless.
Knock wood.
The link below has a very nice history of right and left hand driving.
Now, as to the restrooms, for a gas station, these are certainly beautiful.
But in the heat of the moment, not looking at them side to side, is it so obvious which is which? and I think the camera highlights the blue and pink more so then in real life.
Twelve hours from now, I will be snugged into an aisle seat on Delta Airlines, watching the minutes drag by like hours.
As many times as I have taken the red eye to Europe over eh past 30 years, I still dislike it, a lot. In fact, I’d rather go to the dentist.
Now, I do like my dentist, a lot. Sometimes I even dress us just for her. One has to stay in the game, even if only in the dugout. When I stop flirting with people, it’ll be time to swim with the fishes.
Speaking of which, in spending more countless hours trying to get my pictures organized once again, I ran across some of our Atlantic Passage pictures.
The water was so blue even with the wind causing some white horses, as many Europeans call whitecaps.
August 28, 2014 250 miles SSW of Ireland
I know it was only months ago when I was gazing at the map in dismay, seeing I have over 1200 miles to do, alone, in September. With summer long gone and autumn rearing it’s windy head I was not looking forward to those miles.
Now I miss it. I can’t wait to get underway again. Listening to the purr of the Lehman, the quiet swish of the Krogen hull cutting through the water like a hot knife in butter, is truly music to my ears.
But I still have 5 months for that to happen.
Tomorrow morning, I will arrive in Dublin, even rent a car, for the first time in years in Ireland. I need to go to New Ross, check on Dauntless, so some winter stuff, minor stuff, defrost the fridge, etc. Talk to the people working on the hull making her look pretty again. And for the right price we will even paint below the cap rail. On Wednesday, I’ll go to Waterford (about 20 minutes away, 3 hours by boat) for two days.
But as much as anything, I am going to Ireland for these four days just to be there, to wish a Merry Christmas to so many of the wonderful people I have met in Waterford. I spent about half my winter last winter in Waterford. IT turned out to be a good mix (half in US, half in Waterford). This year I am already a bit bored in NYC. There is only so much I can do here.
So the plan is New Ross tomorrow, Wednesday & Thursday Waterford, then on Friday fly to Treviso and drive to my friends in Budoia, the little town, very little, that is as much as my home as NYC is.
Three weeks in Italy, almost all with friends will be wonderful, though to mix it up slightly, Julie, who join me on the 23rd, and I will spend New Year’s Eve and day in Venezia. Then taking the water bus to the airport on January 2nd. That will be a first for me. I hope it’s foggy, fog is fun when someone else is doing the driving.
The pictures of interest column on the right posts my Instagram pictures and I will try to post a picture a day to give you an idea of my latest hi-jinks.
And the dollar is getting stronger and oil is in freefall. Can’t ask for much better than that when you have a motorboat that still must cross two oceans and a few seas!
Now, if your first thought is, “I wonder how I missed the first 136 lessons learned?” you wouldn’t be wrong. While almost all of the posts related to cruising on Dauntless have some lessons learned, I don’t label them as such.
So, as mentioned I have fleshed out a general cruise plan for the coming year and into 2017. In a nutshell, we’ll be cruising the west coast of Europe from north of Scotland to southwest Spain by year’s end.
Now, every day, without much else to do, I look at the map, longingly; like porn, maps grab your attention and won’t let go.
I imagine sitting in Dauntless on the Algarve or Cadiz next winter. I know the Med is no fun in the winter. But the spring? The following summer 2017?? How can I not go check it out? A few miles here, a few miles there.
Then, the cold hard facts strike home:
$1.10 per nautical mile fuel cost crossing the Atlantic
$1.34 per nautical mile in fuel cost in Europe this past summer;
$4 per nautical mile for all costs.
So this means that while a good rule of thumb is $1 per nm when crossing oceans; this past summer, cruising along the coast, stopping for the night, eating, drinking and general shenanigans cost money on the order of $4 for every nm traveled.
Sure, this coming summer, I will average less than half the miles every month then we did this past summer. But 30 days on the road is still 30 days on the road. My travelling less, I save fuel money, but that’s it, at only 33% of total costs.
So that $4 figure, may get as low as $3, but won’t go to $2, let alone $1.
Another issue, we still want to be in the Pacific by January 2018! That means, being in the Canaries in October 2017. So, if we are in the south of Spain Jan-Feb 2017 and then maybe go as far as the Balearics in the Spring of 2017, as weather permits, what next?
So I longingly gaze at the charts. I would love to see the Adriatic and Greece by Kadey Krogen. I have friends there. How neat would that be!
So Close, Yet So Far. The red track shows the un-doable trip The Black track is our proposed trip so far.
But the distances! 1,000 miles just to Sicily. One way. 1300 nm to Greece, 1800 nm to Venice. Now double all those numbers, as we have to return.
And now multiply by $4. $12,000 to see the Greek Isles; not happening.
Too many miles, too many dollars, too little time.
But the year not spent in Europe, will be a year spent in the Pacific.
New places, new faces and new friends to make. It’ll be a fun time.
I found this picture of the narrow passage that I was afraid to take. Thought I would include it just to show I have some sense.
So, it took two car rides, four trains, one bus and two airplanes to get home, having spent the last month in Ireland, Germany and England.
It’s great to have the ability to travel; it’s great to visit my wonderful, generous friends and it’s great to be home. None are mutually exclusive. Just the way I like it. I’m just an inclusive type of guy.
So, sitting here, with Squawk Box on CNBC in the background, I thought I would write about the evolution of our plans over the last few weeks.
This link is one of the Chrome tabs that open on my computer each time I am on-line.
I like getting a sense of the general weather patterns over the areas we will be traveling. Also, it gives a sense of how the situation changes or not, from one day to another. In this case, I’m concentrating on the western coasts of France and Spain, as well as the trade winds that will whisk us back to North America and all the way through the Panama Canal.
The long range plan has never changed; but as they say, the devil is in the details.
Before we even acquired our Krogen 42, the overall plan was:
First summer in New England, Nova Scotia
First winter back to Florida and Bahamas
Second summer crossing the North Atlantic
Wintering in northern Europe, the Netherlands.
Third summer in the Baltic
Pretty much as gone according to plan; Ireland replaced the Netherlands and has been the absolutely best choice.
This past summer has taken a bit more money, energy and bruises than anticipated.
This link shows the movement of Dauntless since July 2014. (Note: As you zoom in, the level of detail increases as to the actual route).
As I had already mentioned: first time is nice, second time is great, third time is an anti-climax. So as wonderful Ireland is, both in the people, the country and the cost; it’s time to move on.
Attending the Krogen Rendezvous in early October, helped us decide to keep Dauntless in Europe one more extra year through 2016 and much of 2017. My recent trip to visit sailing friends, Andreas & Annette in Germany and John, Jenny & Ben in England, have further revised our thinking:
First, my original plan of getting Dauntless’ bruises fixed and back in the water ASAP, was scrapped. I came to understand that time out of the water was good and it also made the work schedule for the boat yard easier and therefore less costly for me. So Dauntless will be on the hard until March.
Assuming all is well, then in April we will start our 2016 cruising season, which right now, may not end until we get to South Korea in August 2018 at the earliest.
So right now this is what the general plan looks like:
Year
Season
Locations
2016
Spring
Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Orkneys, Shetlands,
Summer
???, west coast France
Fall
NW Spain
Winter
Portugal, SW Spain
2017
Spring
SE Spain? Med?
Summer
TBD
Fall
Canary Islands, Cape Verde Islands
Winter
Lesser Antilles, Panama Canal, Costa Rica
2018
Spring
When winds allow moving North along west coast to SE Alaska
Summer
Cross Gulf of Alaska, Aleutian Islands, Japan, Southern coast of Korea
So that’s it in a nutshell. 20,000 nm, (36,000 km) in 29 months, 700 nm/month. That’s seemingly a lot, but there are some very long legs, with about 10-12k miles over only three months. Also the last 9 months of the trip will take us halfway around the world. Ummm, that’s a lot. So it may happen that we will add a year in there probably in the Pac NW or British Columbia.
This allows the first 20 months, from April 2016 to November 2017, to be cruised at very comfortable pace.
So stay tuned. Mark your calendar and if you want to do more than just read about our adventures, drop me a line. There will be a lot of miles and days that are better done with company than without.
The Harbour in Hamburg. What? This isn’t Waterford. Not even the same country! Stink’in Ferryman
Yes, I know; “don’t pay the ferryman until get gets you to the other side!”
A little wear and tear
How many times have I heard that sage advice in the last 30 years, certainly more than a thousand!
But you know me, follow convention, but with a twist. OK maybe more than a twist. Maybe simply unconventional, so of course, I will try to see what will happen if I dare to pay the ferryman too soon.
What’s the worst that could happen I asked myself?
Dauntless being hauled in New Ross
Well, the worst happened.
Dauntless sits naked in Ireland, out of the water in the boatyard in New Ross; with her bottom is full view for everyone to see. I hope there are no Kennedy’s around to see her.
Her hull and keel do show some signs of rubbing on harder things than herself. The red splotches are old anti-fouling paint showing through. It’s clear that the new stuff on top stuck not so well.
The work this winter will be repairing those places were the fiberglass (GRP) is showing, as well as patching the numerous nicks and gouges the gelcoat and rub rail acquired since leaving Rhode Island.
Dauntless is very good hands in the New Ross Boatyard. Stephen, Michael, Tomas and Gary are both caring and meticulous. They will get done what needs to be done at a price I can afford. I’m fortunate I found them. It just adds to the great experience I’ve had in Ireland. Virtually every interaction I’ve had in Ireland has ranged from good to great. Even going through security at the airport in Dublin is an almost pleasant experience.
Berfranks Cafe on the Quay in Waterford
So the worst part of the Krogen being out of the water is that I will not spend as much time this winter in Ireland or Waterford. I’ll miss that. Waterford is a great town, full of wonderful, warm people. I’ll miss the bakers, the butcher, my barber, Aiofe (see the link for the background of that name, http://www.visitireland.com/aboutireland/normans.asp) Berfranks Café, a delightfully cozy little place,
Carmel, Peter & Joan at their dry cleaners/laundry, the guy playing the flute with his dog outside Dunn’s and all the others I see routinely that makes Waterford such a nice place to be.
So now, all of a sudden, I find myself in Germany. Why not. I had a week to kill before going back to America and flying Ryan Air is relatively cheap. (I actually visited Ryan Air during my stint as Product Manager at Jeppesen in the late 90’s. We were already giving them weather forecasts for the Galapagos, so I was on the hunt for more sources of weather data for that part of the Pacific.)
I’m in Hamburg; it’s been 30 years since the last visit. Much like New York, it’s traded its edginess for gentrification or better yet, Disneyficatin, which makes the whole family want to visit. The rough and tumble seaport (think Amsterdam) that made it quite different than the rest of the large German cities, is now tamed.
The hardnosed seagoing folk have been replaced by the engineers of Airbus, with Airbus’ second largest (after Toulouse) workforce here in Hamburg.
Flying down the autobahn at 100 mph, on my way to the home of friends I met this summer in Riga with their sailboat Bagatell, I thought about how my life has evolved. I used to live for fast cars. I did the passing, hardly ever having to yield to a faster car. Now, even at 100 mph, I ‘m content to stay out of the left lane, as cars much faster pass, even SUV’s going over 140 mph.
OR maybe it’s not me that’s changed, but simply the circumstances, knowing that this poor rental car doesn’t have much beyond 110 in it in any case.
Another nice feature of the roads in Germany is that in addition to the normal rest areas, with gas, food, etc. every 30 to 40 miles, they have little rest stops, just parking places every few miles. These spots are sometimes quite near the road, but also there are some a few hundred feet way with NO lights. In other words, dark, enabling a tired driver to get some sleep. Being far enough form the road, the noise was also minimal. Now, I wouldn’t be going for a walk there, but to have a peaceful place to stop was really nice.
Important facts About Waterford
So, I was able to sleep a few hours and got to my friend’s house at 07:30 in the morning, feeling relatively good.
I’ll go to England on Tuesday, also visiting English sailors I met in Riga. Then it back to Dublin and NYC next week.
The Krogen along the wall in Gdansk. The marina is on the right. But our price was right!
I’ve written about many aspects of the Dauntless’ Summer Cruise 2015, the good, the bad and certainly the ugly. How ugly I’ll find out next week. But now, I thought I would share a few more mundane issues that I think will be of interest.
Let me say up front, that if you have any questions or comments you would like to share privately, please email me. My contact information is somewhere in WordPress.
A few interesting tidbits. No, not Tim Horton’s Timbits, (Sorry New Yorkers, even if you have visited one of the Tim Horton’s in NYC, it is Tim Horton’s in name only. The version sold in New York is owned and made by the same person who owns the Dunkin Donuts franchise in NYC. Needless to say, the only thing they have in common is the name).
Type of Overnight
Days of Trip
Percent
Cost
All
128
100%
$ 2,562
Marina
59
46%
$28.15 / night
Dock or wall
32
25%
Anchored
17
13%
Tied to land, with stern anchor
8
6%
Dock in Canal (Scotland)
5
4%
Underway overnight
7
5%
I merged the two categories of marinas and docks because I was a bit arbitrary during the course of the summer. Generally a marina means a marina as we know it with amenities like: an office, a secured dock (but not always), showers, laundry, etc.
Dock or wall is just that, a dock that is floating or a wall . Sometimes I paid, sometimes I didn’t. In general the prices were cheaper since they had little or no amenities.
But again the line between the two types, dock or marina is not that large. A good portion of the marinas had no security; while some cheap docks did. The last dock we stopped at, Arklow in Ireland, was free, and within 30 minutes, two different guys (fishermen) came by to tell us the security code of the gate.
Since we are talking bout security, maybe in the first weeks, I felt a bit apprehensive with the no security, but I’ve been in Europe enough that after I bit I did not even notice. Much of the Netherlands was like that. The river, canal wound through the center of town, there were bollards placed in which to tie. You then found the nearby post, the same as one uses to pay for car parking. You paid your 12 Euros and placed the sticker on your boat. This included electricity that I usually did not bother with.
The far west and far east has the most expensive marinas. The Channel Islands and the first stops in France were $50 per night for a 12 meter boat, as was Tallinn. Helsinki took the prize for the most expensive marina at $60.
The rest of Scandinavia was really good. Stockholm was only $35 and while Copenhagen was more at $45, the small towns I stopped in Norway ranged from $15 to zero.
In the middle, Germany, Poland, Latvia were all great places to visit and inexpensive; in all three of those countries marinas cost about $25.
Poland and Latvia turned out to be our favorite places. In Gdansk, Poland, were right downtown and our Krogen must have been featured in a thousand pictures. We were on a wall right next to the marina. The wall was free, in fact, the second day, the Bosman, the person in charge of the marina, came by to ask us if we needed electricity, telling him no, he said were welcome to stay on the wall since it was free. I was happy.
The Poles love Americans. Like virtually the entire trip, so many people in seeing the stars and stripes came by to say hello and hear our story: “yes, we took it across the ocean on our own, yes, we are from New York, No, it is not a Grand Banks, it’s a Kadey Krogen”
It was also in Gdansk that I met a couple from Stockholm on their catamaran. Like virtually everyone we met on the water, they were so helpful. They also gave me good advice about Navionics charts in that “Europe HD” was detailed enough to use and there was now no need for paper charts.
And all that for $87.
I always run with two different navigation charts, since last year, Navionics and Jepp’s C-Map. I like the color rendition a bit more on the Navionics, but I must admit that I have not seen any significant difference between the two in Europe.
Speaking of navigation, I found it easier than the ICW, in that it is not critical to know whether the channel is going to or coming from the ocean. Instead, in the skärgärd they will declare “pass red on the left or green on the right” or vice versa. Now in that situation, it is different in that once there was a red of the left and a green on the right of the channel meaning I could NOT go in between where the rock was.
In Riga, I was doing something in the engine room when I felt someone get on the boat. Thinking it was my friends, I kept working; but not hearing their voices, I came up to see this couple having their wedding pictures being taken on the fore deck.
Cute. Latvians loved us too.
All in all, we averaged $28 per stay for the 90 odd days we stopped. Not bad considering a hotel room in many of those cities would have cost 10 times more.
Now you do not have to pay for fuel for that hotel room, but even with fuel, the daily cost is only $76 and with fuel at today’s price it Ireland, that daily average would have been $7 cheaper at $69 per marina.
And it’s sure nice seeing the wonders of the world pass by your living room window.
Being back in Waterford is so much like coming home; though I just left home to fly here.
Umm, maybe I have two homes: wherever Dauntless is and wherever Julie is. That’s simple enough!
So I’m back in Waterford to make plans for what needs to be done for winter. Dauntless and I want to be ready to leave Waterford, probably forever, by early April. Seems like months away; it is months away, but everything on a boat takes longer.
Dauntless at low tide on the Waterford waterfront. The crane in the background is still used.
So this morning I made my rounds. Also walking in Waterford, being surrounded by friendly, warm people is the perfect antidote for the last day’s fiascos. I have described Irish as like Italians and Spaniards, but they speak English; but have now come to the conclusion that they are on a level all by themselves. Unlike pretty much everyone else in Europe, the Irish never had an empire, not even the inkling of one nor even the desire.
They use more terms of ___ then anyone else and they truly mean it. Need something; everything stops while they try to solve your problem.
And they curse more than New Yorkers also! Not like “F—k you”; but more like the exclamation, “can you believe we had a whole f—king day without rain!” And they drag out the sound so it is more like “foooking”.
Cute.
At 3:15 p.m. the streets are full of uniformed kids of every age coming from school. It baffles me how Americans, who pride themselves on being egalitarian, can’t see how important uniforms are for kids. Umm, I wonder why those expensive private schools in New York, ($40k per year) make their kids wear uniforms and even limit technology in the classroom. Worst of all, they even make their kids learn the multiplication table. There should be a law against that. But I digress.
I made my little circuit of the town this morning deciding that I was going to make a wholesome dinner today. Yesterday, arriving from New York, I had my coffee in the morning and an ice cream bar, a Magnum Black, for dinner.
My bread from Hickey’s Bread on the left, my butcher on the right, John Molly’s, is hidden behind the truck.
I like cooking for guests, but today I had decided I needed real food. So my first stop was the butcher where I got 4 lamb chops and Brussels sprouts. Then, the baker, where I got some crusty Hobbit bread. Then the second baker, the cupcake guy, as I love his apple pies.
Master of Cakes, Cupcake Couture
I just finished making my coleslaw, No secrets there, real mayonnaise, vinegar, salt, pepper and a tablespoon of Korean hot pepper paste with vinegar.
My Laundry. How could I miss it!
And in cruising through the World Wide Web, I found this link about mayonnaise which I thought to the point.
This is the table for our Summer 2015 Baltic Sea Cruise on Dauntless
OK. Sorry about the black background, but I have spent too many hours today just f…ing with this “picture” imported from Excel via Word.
Some of the things that jump out at me:
While the Fuel cost was a third of total costs, it wasn’t more.
Eating and food costs were also a third of total expenses.
My morning treat of coffee and some kind of pastry, is not an insignificant cost at almost a thousand dollars.
It really helped that my friends/guests/crew paid most of the marina fees.
By the time I got to Germany, I realized that fuel consumption was actually running much higher than anticipated, around 1.75 gallons/hour. So I made a conscious effort to run at an “economy” speed, about 1400 to 1500 rpms, for the rest of the trip and it clearly worked. I was able to average 1.35 gallons per hour and 3.84 nm/gal at an average speed of 5.2 knots.
By contrast, crossing the Atlantic, the respective numbers were 1.59 gallons/hour and 3.6 nm/gallon at an average speed of 5.7 knots.
All these numbers speak to the efficiency of the Kadey Krogen and the KK42 in particular. We love this boat. She is a tough little girl. Far tougher than me. I really don’t understand why, but I am more, not less, prone to sea sickness than last year or even our first year.
Maybe the weight of responsibility weighs on me more? Maybe I am going out under more adverse conditions? Who knows?
I did get back to NY 5 pounds lighter than when I left in early May. That is nice. But my sense is that being alone on the North Sea for three days will make anyone lose weight. Maybe Oprah should have invested in Dauntless instead of Weight Watchers.
Still to come: I hope to write a summary of the entire cruise; talk about the recent Krogen Owners Rendezvous I just attended and lastly, get my Instagram account up and running so, even if I am not posting, I can at least post pictures with a few snappy captions. Or is that snippy?
30 September 2015, 13:10 hours, we passed the track off of Dunmore East that we had made leaving Ireland 4 months and 5 days earlier on the 25th of May.
Bost in Vadrarfjordr. The Only City in Ireland that Kept its Viking NameDauntless in her New Spot in Waterford
As I motored slowly up the River Suir, it is impossible to describe my feelings. Much like crossing the Atlantic, this was another 4,000 nm, 7,200 km trip milestone completed.
Spread out over four months instead of one, was both a blessing and a curse:
A blessing in that time is spread out, so schedules are more flexible and the scenery is constantly changing, as is the places visited and the foods eaten.
A curse in that it’s almost exclusively coastal travelling and the stress that entails, rocks, narrow channels, and worst of all, expensive marinas.
And much like the Atlantic Passage, coming full circle was a culmination of years of dreaming and planning. As soon as the Atlantic was planned, still years before we actually had a boat, I had moved on to phase two, the first full spring and summer in northern Europe. So of course that meant the Baltic and those lands of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia that were almost totally new to me.
Arklow Inner Harbor
For the most part, if the plan has been well thought out, events unfold as planned. As I look at the Dauntless Cruise Plan that was finalized in April, I pretty much stuck to the plan into September.
Arklow Inner Harbor
Sadly, as I cruised up the Suir, I was occupied with trying to get my cell phone on. It had gone to sleep and never woke up. No sign of life, even when being charged or when I changed its battery.
Today, 48 hours later, I have accepted that its demise is permanent. And sadly today, I just realized that I had not downloaded any pictures since the end of August.
Still of the 600 that were on the phone, I had uploaded a few pictures and videos to WordPress and I have the hundreds of pictures I took with the Samsung K-30, but I like the Note for its ability to take good panorama shots. All of the pictures I post with these blogs came from the Note. That’ll change now.
Now the previous week, I had talked to Johnny, the Waterford City Council guy in charge of the marina and I think a bunch of other things too, to find out where to tie up as the docks were almost full. We had planned that I would call again coming up the river. But now I couldn’t., which always adds to the stress since knowing the spot I was going to is one less thing to worry about.
Trawler unloading in Arklow
Spotting an empty spot at the end of one of the three floating docks (pontoons in British English) there was a sign saying it was a private spot, but any port in a storm, is a lesson I have learned the hard way. Also, there are a number of these marked spots on the dock, but they are not necessarily up to date and the owners had moved on long ago. I was in such a spot all last winter.
Thus I took it, got tied up, changed to my street clothes and then the owner of the spot motored on up, with his wife and two daughters.
Oops.
I went out and apologizing profusely, asked him what I should do, telling him that I had not been able to call Johnny and dreading the response, to move to who knows where?
BBQ in Arklow
Instead he was really nice and said no problem at all; he would just raft outside of Dauntless until I found my place. I thought that was particularly gracious since it meant he had to hang around until I got things sorted out.
Just then, I look down the pontoon, and who do I see walking towards us was Johnny, himself. Now, I was surprised, knowing how busy Johnny is, as well as the fact that the marina (dock really) is just a small part of his job, very small.
Turns out while he had not heard from he, he had spotted Dauntless coming up the river on AIS.
What a relief. I did not want to inconvenient my new found friend Danny any more than I already had. Johnny did have a tight spot for me on the inside of the pontoon, one that I had not considered knowing the water was very shallow on the inside, but in this case it was deep enough.
So 15 minutes later, we were retied to the spot we are currently in. Johnny also called the boat owner in my previous spot to confirm they were pulling their boat this coming Saturday, so I could move back there then.
A wonderful welcome back to Waterford. There are simply no more friendly people than the Irish. Virtually every encounter over the last 13 months had been of this sort. Always willing to help, always friendly to all boaters.
Stopping over in Arklow, the evening before illustrates the point:
It’s a small fishing town. Everyone is so nice. We just stopped in Arklow for a few hours to wait on the tide to turn in about 5 hours.
There was a big sailboat tied to the wharf wall, a commercial dock, with large rubber tires and old timber. I told the sailboat skipper I just needed to stop for 5 or 6 hours. So he suggested I raft (tie up to his boat) next to him. As we were tossing lines, a guy came by on Kayak to tell me the hammerhead on the dock in the small inner harbor with fishing boats was open.
So realizing that was better I moved the boat there and after getting tied up, two different guys, working guys, came by to tell me the access code for the gate and we had a discussion about the tides and currents and the best time to leave.
And of course, this dock was free.
One thing you see in Ireland is that they really like everyone on a boat.
You don’t see the class warfare you see in many places. Fisherman always wave and talk with you. When I spent last September rafted to fishing boats in Castletownbere, Dauntless fit right in, in both size and the lines of the boat. (I wrote about this in the post, “Now It’s Miller Time” sometimes we were rafted 4 or 5 deep.
So my welcome home was better than I could have even hoped.
The Krogen Cruisers have their annual rendezvous next week, so of course I am going to that. I like talking to other owners about our boats and its amazing prowess.
So Tomorrow I fly to my real home, but I’ll be back in a couple weeks to sort out what needs to be done this winter.
In the next weeks and months, I will backfill these posts with the events of the summer that I never had time to write about such as: Cruising with Another Krogen in Holland, Estonia, Finland and Sweden and single handing thru Denmark, Norway and Scotland, the Caledonian Canal and of course, Crossing the North Sea.
Yes, that has been me and in spite of my constant kvetching about being bored in NYC, I have spent this time planning.
Dauntless at Sea 