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2025 DELMARVA Reports |
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This
DMVA Cruise had absolutely perfect weather as the skies were bright and clear
both day and night, temperatures cool and comfortable, wind direction always in
our favor, no stink bugs, flies or mosquitoes, and my crew were great sailors
and perfect crewmates!! What more could you ask for? The
DMVA training cruise comprises a 450 nautical mile route circumnavigating the
Delaware-Maryland-Virginia Peninsula that separates the Chesapeake Bay from the
Atlantic Ocean. We sail this route in the clockwise direction starting from Rock
Hall in the Chester River located in the upper bay north of the Annapolis Bay
Bridge, pass through the C&D Canal and down Delaware Bay into the Atlantic,
then south to the southern entrance of Chesapeake Bay between Norfolk and Cape
Charles and up the bay to Annapolis and Rock Hall our home port. This route
includes two overnight transits, one offshore in the Atlantic and one in the
bay, plus stops in Swan Creek on a mooring ball, Summit North Marina in the
C&D Canal, Cape Charles City docks and Annapolis docks in the famed Ego
Alley. Prior
to departure, the crew assembled onboard at our marina in Rock Hall for a day
and a half of boat inspections, inventory, sail deployment training, navigation
preparations and route planning for our first day underway to Swan Creek on
Sunday. We at the school have completed this training cruise many times in the
past and wrote a detailed training plan book containing all of the principal
procedures needed to properly complete this cruise on this boat. And we require
the student crew to follow these procedures when performing any of these
procedures in order to coordinate the actions of the various crewmembers with
different backgrounds and experience levels who have not previously sailed with
each other. To
achieve this coordination, each student crewmember was appointed to act as
Student Skipper for a 24-hour period. This started with Bengt at 1600 hours on
Sunday, Mike at 1600 on Monday, Rebeckah at 1600 on Tuesday, and Roy at 1600 on
Wednesday, and the cycle repeated for the remaining days of the cruise. The
Student Skipper was responsible for assigning and coordinating the remainder of
the crew in performing the training plan procedures, with book in hand, to
remain on track and not wing it. The
boat we sail for this cruise is NAVIGATOR, an Island Packet IP40
cutter-rigged ocean sailing boat, that we also sail for our Bermuda Ocean
Training Cruises. She has three working sails of Mainsail, 130% Genoa and
Staysail. Mainsail has a straight-cut leach without roach, jiffy reefed second
and third reefs, and no battens; it’s a simple offshore mainsail requiring
muscle and clear thinking when raising, lowering and reefing and has minimal
wear points due to absence of lazy jacks, battens and furling mechanisms which
can abrade the sail material during long offshore passages. Genoa and Staysail
are both roller-furled with conventional sheets, cockpit winches and furling
lines. Engine is a beautiful Yanmar 65 HP diesel that has served us well. Watch
schedule follows two arrangements depending on which cruise leg we are sailing.
The daytime legs follow a rotating, one-hour schedule, and the overnight legs
follow a six-hour schedule as follows: During
the daytime transits from Rock Hall to Swan Creek, Swan Creek to C&D Canal, and
Annapolis to Rock Hall, the student crew were on one-hour watches as follows:
During
the overnight transits from C&D Canal to Cape Charles City and from Cape
Charles City to Annapolis, the student crew were on six-hour watches as follows:
Captain
Tom and Captain Tim were on six-hour watches at times that straddled the student
times. They monitored crew operations of the boat offering guidance or
instruction as needed or applicable at the moment, but the student crew largely
ran the boat the whole time. Captain
Tim provided hands-on navigation training during daylight hours to student crew
who were not on watch. This included sighting and taking bearings on stationary
objects such as lights, points of land and dayboards that could be identified on
the charts and plotted lines of position, fixes and running fixes to confirm our
position in comparison with our GPS position. As the boating community has
largely succumbed to the present-day heavy reliance on electronic navigation, we
included this training to illustrate an alternative for when the electronics
fail and for the simple joy and gratification of going back to basics. However,
this crew fell short of the basic lessons in navigation preps by short cutting
the basic procedures of fully preparing the cruise plan on paper charts with
attendant lookups of restrictions and dredge operations as described in the DMVA
Training Plan book and our YouTube video “Navigation Preparations for an
Advanced Coastal Cruise.” Instead of following the sequential process of
completing the paper chart and lookup work and then programing waypoints on the
Chart Plotter, they expedited the process by dividing the tasks among
crewmembers and performed them in parallel. This led to incorrect waypoints on
the plotter that would take us into the wrong estuary before arriving at our
marina. And nowhere does the logbook show lookups of restrictions or dredges or
results of LNM or BNM searches, so they need to redouble their attention to
these requirements in their future sailing. The
crew did a Sun calibration of the ship’s compass following procedures in our
Coastal Navigation & Piloting book and our YouTube video titled “Compass
Calibration- The Easy Way” but this was in an open area of unprotected water
near the Cape Charles City entrance channel where wave action disturbed the sun
compass shadow and made it difficult to get stable readings. Also, the crew
reported that the Sun shadow was very short in length due to the near-noon time
of day making it difficult to correlate the shadow with the degree numbers on
the plotting sheet. But, they made a good attempt and learned the hands-on
details of the process so that they will be able to perform this calibration on
their own boats if they choose to do so in the future. The
crew also did an unplanned MOB rescue drill of a cockpit cushion that
accidentally went overboard, and successfully recovered it, thus checking off
that ASA106 requirement. The
weather was perfect for the entire cruise; something of a rarity! Cool, clear
comfortable, with winds never on our nose and no rain or fog. When going up the
bay to the C&D Canal on Monday, winds were on our port beam at 5 to 10
knots, giving us a little lift but no waves to speak of. This resulted in calm
and consistent travel that allowed crew to focus on learning the basic
procedures needed to be mastered before the long leg down Delaware Bay and
overnight in the Atlantic ocean, including helming, watchkeeping, underway
navigation, weather and tracking other vessels both visually and with radar and
AIS. Winds
remained light from the northwest as we motored down Delaware Bay on Tuesday
until about 1500 when they began to clock around to the north, east and south by
midnight. As we neared Brown Shoal Light, we served dinner, stopped to check
engine oil and single-reefed the mainsail before rounding Cape Henlopen on the
southern shores of Delaware Bay and proceeded into the Atlantic and sunset for
an overnight offshore passage. After midnight, winds backed to north and
northwest on Wednesday overnight and increased to 15 to 20 knots giving us good
off-wind sailing with reefed main and full genoa, which we maintained until
reaching the southern entrance to Chesapeake Bay at Cape Charles around 1700 on
Wednesday, passed under the Fisherman’s Island Bridge and docked at Cape
Charles City Marina by sunset on Wednesday. Navigation preps were well made in
advance of this channel entrance, and the crew was prepared to make it in a
coordinated and professional manner. After docking, crewmembers took showers
ashore and went to The Shanty Restaurant for dessert since we previously had
dinner onboard before entering the bay. Thursday,
up about 0700, had cheese omelets onboard while the crew prepped navigation for
the overnight trip up the bay, did predeparture preps, left slip about 1100,
topped the diesel, pumped out holding tank, departed marina about 1130, did Sun
calibration of compass and were northbound up the bay by noon with south winds
of 15 to 20 knots making for a nice downwind run. We had to gybe a few times to
follow a safe course since the wind was almost dead astern… but we got good at
doing controlled gybes! Overnight
up the bay was busy at times with other traffic, but crew did well in managing
this, and we arrived at Annapolis about 1000 hours on Friday. Took a slip in Ego
Alley, but this was a very crude stern-to docking because I chose the wrong
procedure and everyone needed to scurry to straighten things out, but we made it
into the slip with no damage. I should have approached the slip starboard side
to and used a standard Waterman’s spring rigged to the stern docking cleat as
we normally do when docking in our home slip. Crew
then took showers again and settled in to write their ASA106 exams, which
everyone passed quite easily. Went to dinner at O’Brien's Restaurant where the
group consumed many drinks and appetizers – Oh, and dinner too – and told a
lot of sea stories a few of which were true. Then back to the boat for Nav Prep
for the return trip to Rock Hall and our marina. Saturday,
we got underway from the slip at 0700, motored to the route and under the Bay
Bridge using the northbound Auxiliary Channel, arrived at our marina by 1300,
pumped out the waste holding tank, and were settled into our slip by 1400.
Everyone was quick to collect their gear, removed trash and do a basic boat
cleanup, presented diplomas, took photos and bid farewell with agreement to have
a reunion in the future. This
was an excellent crew that came together very well; strangers with positive
attitudes who worked together to learn the ropes and collaborate. They took care
and were respectful of each other, always stepped up to go the extra mile and
make the team work constructively… I applaud you all for a great cruise and a
job well done!! Good
work! Tom Captain
Tom Tursi
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