Sailing around Cape Hatteras a/k/a the Graveyard of the Atlantic, November 28-30, 2021

 

    

Lisa Testing the Lifelines Before Departure

 

    We tried to plan carefully for our first big multi-day passage, but of course things never go the way you have planned.  We brought two different carloads of supplies from home, foolishly thinking that would be all we needed.  Since then, I think we've loaded 3 or 4 more car loads and probably like 50 Amazon deliveries.  Bottom line, we didn't know what we didn't know.

     There is a small industry of people providing support to new boat owners like Lisa and I, catering to the fact that most of us have some combination of money and anxiety. We have taken advantage of most of the support options we could find, including what is now a few years of classes and training as well as some one on one coaching, training, hand holding, advising services. There is also a highly regarded guy who does weather planning exclusively for the cruising community (“cruising” is the preferred label of vagabond sailor types). We have been in more or less constant communication with him looking for a suitable weather pattern to make the initial jump south.

     It is quite important to plan the weather carefully when headed out around the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Smaller vessels can pass inland through the inter coastal waterway and avoid the problem, but Dragonfly is a very tall girl and entirely unable to pass under the many bridges that line the route. The outer passage takes you off the coast in a notorious stretch that is charmingly called the “Graveyard of the Atlantic”-- which isn’t the most comfortable sounding label out there. Even better, once you are committed to the route, there is not really a way to change your mind and seek shelter. There is a bridge at Oregon Inlet that blocks entry to our boat and if the weather is so bad that you can’t make it around Hatteras, you can only turn tail and run back to Norfolk. In a perfect world, it isn’t the route you would pick for our first big overnight passage with just the two of us, but it’s the only choice we had.

     We’ve been trying to find a good weather pattern for a little while and it requires a Goldilocks style situation. You don’t want winds from the south, because sailing into the wind has been a thing that sailors avoid since the Phoenicians. It’s not fun. You don’t want winds from the north, because then they blow in opposition to the Gulf Stream and that results in very nasty seas. I suppose winds from the east would be fine, but there is essentially no such thing as winds from the east. So you are looking for winds from the west. Fall weather patterns are based around cold fronts plowing from west to east and so you generally want to time it just right to catch the shifting winds as the front passes by. After waiting a week or two, we finally saw a window that our weather guru thought was a good one and we decided to set sail.

     Now, when I say it was a good weather window, I must say that this is all relative. It required us to leave at sunset and start our trip in the dark which makes sail handling more difficult and it was projected to be what Chris (our weather guru) optimistically described as “brisk” which meant winds of 20 knots gusting to 30 or more and seas of 9 feet or so. It also required some careful timing – if we got to the tip too early we’d see these kinds of conditions around Cape Hatteras and Diamond Shoals itself, which is not ideal. It's not exactly unsafe, but it would certainly be uncomfortable and likely to leave everyone green around the edges. However, if we arrived too late, we’d be facing what looked like rapidly building winds in our face as we approached Beaufort. So we really wanted to arrive in a 2-4 hour window when things would be just right.  One of my other gurus looked at the weather and didn't much like it, but by the time he told me that, I was already on my way out of the bay into the Atlantic and I decided to keep on trucking.

This guy called me on the radio and asked me nicely if I would go behind him.

     After some careful consideration, we decided we would just motor out there. The winds were projected to be highly variable overnight on that first night and the seas should build rapidly off the coast. We weren’t that keen on trying to make a lot of sail changes in the dark under bouncy conditions. We also agreed between ourselves that we would always wake the other person before going forward to adjust the sails. Since the passage was going to take two nights and someone always has to be on watch for good and obvious reasons, we didn’t especially relish waking each other up all night, so motoring was the order of the day. The other complication is that we were trying to hit the middle of that weather window with precision and sailing just isn’t that precise. You go at the speed you go. Motoring allows much finer adjustments. Truth be told, we could have sailed just fine up until I called it quits at 4am and got Lisa up to take the next shift. We could have dropped sails then and saved like 6 hours of motoring.

By the time Lisa took over, we were heading down the coast of North Carolina off Duck or so and everything was looking perfect to hit the 5pm target to round the Cape. I went to bed around 5am bundled in a sleeping bag with hot water bottles and a blanket or two for good measure. Did I mention it was freezing?

     Lisa took over the watch, which isn’t too bad on a modern boat with all the latest technology. The best gear of all is called autopilot. You set a specific spot on the ocean that you want to go to and the trusty autopilot will constantly adjust the wheel to keep you precisely on course like a robot. When you look back at the track, it looks like an interstate highway in Texas, straight as an arrow. All you really have to do on watch is poke your head around every 15 minutes or so, make sure there are no new lights or approaching boats on the horizon and listen carefully to make sure everything sounds fine and the boat is trundling along as it should. There is even technology that most offshore boats use that sends out an automated identification signal so that you can see your neighbors, determine their speed and course and tell if you are on a collision course or not. It sounds a loud alarm if you are going to pass too close and greatly improves your safety. Some sailors sail alone, relying on the alerts from this system to wake them should any danger be in their future. This seems a bit mad to me, but they do it all the time and don’t die (usually).

     I couldn’t sleep very well and once the sun rose I realized laying in bed with my thoughts racing wasn’t doing any good, so I got back up around 8 and tagged out with Lisa. She chastised me for not sleeping longer, but accepted that I wasn’t able to get back to sleep and agreed that we would trade places and I could nap later during the “easier” day watches. While she was sleeping, I set my next autopilot point for just off the famed Diamond Shoals to get the robot’s opinion on exactly what time I would arrive.

At this point everything went to hell. Instead of making the relatively small course correction needed to aim at the new point, the boat only turned slightly in the right direction, before veering suddenly and violently in the wrong direction. This is not the kind of reliable assistance one expects from their robot companion. I disengaged the autopilot, manually steered back to more or less the correct course and tried again. Same result – the boat plowed madly towards shore or out to sea and tried to get broadside to the 6 foot waves, which is not really what you’d like to do if you can help it. The boat tossed wildly and I started to get an anxious feeling. Back to hand steering and doing some thinking. It felt to me like some kind of software glitch, because the electronics insisted that they were steering just fine when I engaged autopilot, even though the wheel never moved a millimeter. Plus, everything was working just fine before I asked for a new course. Much like any other electronics, when they screw up, the usual fix is to reboot. I always intended to rename any boat I bought “Reboot” because of this truth.

     Readers, I rebooted everything that could be rebooted over the next hour or two. It had to be planned quite carefully, because if I stepped away from the wheel, the violent seas would very quickly throw Dragonfly off course, so I had to pick my spots very carefully to rush down and hit the power buttons, rush back to the wheel, steady the course, wait a few minutes and repeat the process to power whatever unit I was testing back on.

     Although I had warned Lisa that I was going to play around with our course, so some of the wild motion would be written off as me doing that, pretty soon Lisa came up to ask me if everything was ok. I had to report to her that technically, no, everything was not so great. We had lost our trusty autopilot and I was running out of ideas – I had by now rebooted everything there is to reboot and my next options were much uglier, like trying to install new software or have the autopilot factory reset. This is not an useful option because if you do that you have to perform a series of test maneuvers so that the autopilot can calibrate itself which simply isn't a thing you can even contemplate in 9 foot seas off Cape Hatteras.

     I asked Lisa to take over hand steering while I considered my options and did some internet research. I sat down at the table and started looking things over. I reached out to my friend and sailing guru Jamie Gifford, who had previously told me that he thought the weather window was just too narrow for comfort and that he would prefer that we not attempt to do the crossing right now, but after talking through the risks with him and my weather guru I decided to (hopefully with with some grace and gratitude) thank him for the advice, but inform him I intended to proceed anyhow. I described the problem with autopilot to him and he and I worked through some alternatives calmly and carefully. It looked very likely that we were missing a software patch – apparently on a long journey my particular autopilot can get a memory overload condition and become completely unresponsive. That sounded a lot like what was happening, but downloading and installing a patch mid-journey might be a challenge.

     Worse news, the seas were building as predicted to 9 feet swells and Lisa was really struggling to keep the boat on course. The waves were mostly behind us, but once the boat pointed slightly at an angle to the wave, it would dive off the wave at an even sharper angle and the mechanical forces on the rudder as it did so were extremely strong and it was physically demanding to keep the nose of the boat pointed in the right direction. If you look at our course during that time, it isn’t the absolutely precise straight line autopilot produces, but I think she actually did very well. But it was taking a toll on her and all of the sudden we had to plan for a very different reality than we expected. Now we couldn’t stay in the cabin most of the time and pop out for a couple minutes every 15 minutes. Now we were going to have to steer by hand the rest of the journey and sit outside exposed to the wind and cold 24 hours a day. It was going to make the trip a lot less fun.

     Around this time Chris sent me a weather update in which he relayed the highly unwelcome news that the latest predictions called for the big winds and waves to persist until 8pm at Cape Hatteras instead of abating at 4 like we planned. He said that he was confident it wouldn’t be dangerous, but that it was going to be quite unpleasant. Easy for him to say. The challenges of hand steering were slowing us down, but not nearly enough to delay our arrival until 8pm. There was another boat that was also making the same trip just a quarter mile or so away from us and they had hailed us on the radio to talk about the conditions. I told him we had lost autopilot and weren’t excited about hand steering the rest of the way. He told me his girlfriend was down with sea sickness and that his autopilot was unable to keep up with these seas and he thought we were steering a straighter course without the autopilot that he was with. We agreed to keep in touch as the day went on and I told him what I was seeing on the weather forecasts and he agreed it looked like we were in for some ugly moments. We debated how far inside the channel markers we were willing to cut and wished each other the best.

     Although Jamie had agreed with me that it did seem to be software related, when I spelled Lisa briefly to hand steer while she got a warm drink and stretched her aching muscles I decided to try to engage the autopilot again just in case a miracle had occurred. It had not. However, I thought I heard a faint noise coming from the engine compartment when I engaged it. I felt like it was worth investigating and I shared my plan with Lisa. I put on my life vest, tethers, headlamp and wireless radio headset and more or less crawled out onto the back of the boat. The waves were very impressive from this angle. I slithered down into the engine compartment, ducked around the rudder hardware and had a look at the autopilot. I was hoping maybe something came loose and I could just reattach it, but there was no such luck. I asked Lisa to engage the autopilot and it was immediately obvious that the unit was damaged internally. It made a hideous noise that sounded like some gears were chewed off or something. At least now I knew what I was dealing with.

 If your autopilot sounds like this, its very bad

The louder mechanical noise is the engine, the grinding death is the autopilot

     The prior owner of our boat, god love him, had carried a spare autopilot drive unit around the world with him. It was mounted to the wall of the engine compartment with the exact same hardware that the primary unit used, so I had two of everything, in case something broke or I dropped a part under the generator or something. I knew I had a path forward. I just had to figure out what bolts to detach and what wires to connect and just maybe everything would be fine and we wouldn’t spend the next 24 hours in complete misery.

     I took a series of pictures of the various mounting points and where I thought the wires connected. This was a challenge because this engine compartment is quite full of other gear and the autopilot is, by necessity, mounted to the rudder/steering hardware that is rocking back and forth violently as Lisa wrestles with the wheel. You had to be careful where you put your head and hands. You also had to brace yourself because at any moment the boat was going to lurch violently in a new direction.

     At some point I gave Lisa a heart attack because a wave crashed over the back and doused me with several buckets of water as I was making my way back out of the engine compartment. I shouted in surprise and unhappiness and she shouted even louder in concern “What? What? Are you ok?” I had to admit I was fine, just surprised and soaked. I was probably not at my most attractive when I crawled back into the cockpit looking like a wet dog and trying my best not to throw up all over the deck. It turns out that I am capable of getting seasick when I drop down into an engine compartment with no light and no view of the sea, sky or horizon. I felt unwell.

     I messaged Jamie with my findings and told him to stand down the search for the softawre patch and instead that I was now going to be installing a new autopilot drive unit. It turns out that he has the same unit and he told me that I actually didn’t need to unscrew the four bolts I identified. He told me there was a pin secured with a cotter key that would allow me to slide the end out. So it looked like only three keys, a few washers and a metal shaft that I’d have to press out and then back in. Plus make 4 electrical connections. Not so bad at all.

     I was about to gather my tools and go back down, but Jamie advised me to take an hour nap since I was operating on almost no sleep. He said I could rehearse how I was going to do it in my mind and carefully plan every action and it would all go much more smoothly if I did so. I told Lisa my plan and she didn’t look all that excited to be left alone hand steering for another hour, but she is a tough cookie and assured me that it was a good plan and for me to get back up afterwards and fix this shit.

     When I came back up, I had all the things I’d need to make the electrical connections (this part was a bit unclear to me because I couldn’t see that side at all) and the tools I thought I’d need to take the pins and shaft out. I decided I’d remove the spare first and collect all the little bits and pieces I might drop from the primary unit as backups. That actually went without a hitch and I hauled the new unit up to inspect it. I stripped the insulation from the control wires and headed back down. It would have gone more smoothly if I was thinner and/or more limber, but I was able to remove the old unit, identify the appropriate wires and get ready to install the replacement. Installing the new one with the boat underway, while I needed to attach the control arm to a rapidly seesawing rudder without mushing my fingers or dropping anything crucial was interesting. I did have to dip into my spares as I managed to drop a washer down under the generator during an especially violent jolt, but I calmly fished out the backup from my collection and kept going. Lining up the shaft of the control unit with the bearing and inserting the metal pin in while everything moved in three dimensions was similarly interesting, but eventually managed. Making the electrical connections was easy, the power ones used those handy snap-in connectors and I just had to twist up the smaller control wires and wrap them in electrical tape. I emerged from the engine compartment so anxious about what would happen I forgot to feel sea sick. I washed the topmost layer of grease off my hands while Lisa asked how it was going. I asked her to let me sit next to her and looked her in the eye as I reached to press the autopilot engage button, making a silent plea with my eyes. Instantly the wheel started to rotate smartly back and forth in the joyful way a working autopilot does.

     It is hard to put words to the jubilation I felt at that moment. It is so rare in life to flip a switch and in an instant go from resignation to some unpleasant fate to joyful realization that it is over and everything is good. I’ve had far more happy experiences, don’t get me wrong, but convincing Lisa to marry me took place over several years. Even seeing my Dad recover from what I thought was a hopeless medical problem took place over many days. I don’t remember a situation where things turned around in a split second like that moment. Maybe it only happens in sports and this was better than the Malcom Butler interception to win the Super Bowl by a long shot.  I’m not sure exactly what happened in those next few seconds. I know there was shouting and I know that I hugged Lisa way too tightly. Now instead of facing 24 hours of constant attention to the wheel, we could return to a more normal watch schedule.

     We still had the problem of arriving at Cape Hatteras while the winds and seas were still raging but this seemed so much more manageable now. Whoever is writing the story of my life realized that we had reached the climax of the episode because right on cue, 30 minutes after I fixed the autopilot, the weather turned at 4pm to a much calmer state. Just like the original forecast and ignore that 8pm stuff. In 5 minutes the seas dropped from 9 feet to like 3 feet and angels sang.

     I called our friends on the radio a short while later and they agreed it was miraculous. She was now up and about and they were cooking and eating dinner. I shared that I had repaired the autopilot and she said with relief on the radio that she was very worried about us having to hand steer the whole way. I didn’t share quite how relieved I was because I was pretty sure they already knew. I stayed up until we safely turned the corner around Hatteras then I slept for 4 hours or so and I took over from Lisa around 11pm. She was exhausted from having to do almost all the hand steering while I worked on repairs and she got some much needed sleep.

     The next day was almost anti-climactic. I napped a bit after Lisa woke up and the seas were blessedly calm. We maneuvered smartly into Beaufort, tied up at the dock pretty much smooth as silk and started to contemplate what we could eat and drink and when we could sleep. I may have checked into a hotel room so that I could take a 30 minute hot shower. Don’t judge. It wasn’t always easy, but it was profoundly satisfying. Lisa contends that if I hadn’t fixed the autopilot we might have been putting Dragonfly up for sale in Beaufort. I’m not sure she’s serious, but I’m also not sure she isn’t.

Was Lisa happy to be tied up in Beaufort?  I think so.