MV Dirona travel digest for Horta to Charleston 2021

Position: 38°31.82'N, -28°37.31'W

We had a great walk around Horta yesterday and really enjoyed looking around and taking pictures, but it was raining pretty hard. The camera has seen a hard rain before, but this one was the end of it. Here we giving it a few days to thoroughly dry out, but it looks like it's not coming back.

Position: 38°31.82'N, -28°37.31'W

Delcio Silva of Bensaude Shipping Agents picking up our passports and arrival paperwork to clear us out of Horta. We were planning to depart tomorrow morning, but the weather improved enough that we could leave this morning. We would have loved to stopped for a week or more in Horta, but James needs to spend some time at work in Seattle.

We used agents frequently in the South Pacific, but haven't for the past few years. For Horta we worked with Bensaude on the recommendation of Laurie and Alec Thyrre of Nordhavn 64 Gratitude. We're really glad we did, as they were able to arrange a berth, dockside fueling, COVID testing and clearing in and out with great efficiency at a reasonable price. This was particularly important given our short two-night stay, allowing us time to explore the Horta area.

Position: 38°31.71'N, -28°37.04'W

A final view to Horta as we set off for Charleston.

Position: 38°30.91'N, -28°37.09'W

The exposed ocean side of the peninsula Monte da Guia is full of sea caves.

Position: 38°30.91'N, -28°37.09'W

View to Capelinhos on the northwest corner of the island of Faial. The active volcano last erupted in 1958, destroying 3,000 homes and resulting in the evacuation and subsequent emigration of 2,000 residents.

Position: 38°27.77'N, -28°39.29'W

Our current route from Horta to Charleston, highlighted in red at the bottom of the screenshot, through the Azores High. This route is longer than the more direct Great Circle route via Bermuda (the second pink line from the top leading from the boat position), but will hopefully keep us out of the path of the steady sequence of low pressure systems that move east across the Atlantic, such as the one hitting Ireland right now.

We'll be making the passage at about the same time of year as our crossing from Newport, RI to Kinsale, Ireland and have first-hand experience on what those systems are like. And on that crossing we were running with the wind and waves. This time we'd be running against them, so we have even more reason to avoid them.

Position: 38°8.87'N, -28°57.25'W

After a long run, we run the boat briefly at high RPM to blow out any soot from the stack. We'd forgotten to do this on arrival into Horta, and yesterday's fairly heavy rain probaly washed the inside of the stack down a bit, so it sooted on startup this morning. Normally the soot can be sprayed off fairly easily with water, but we didn't notice and tracked it across the deck, so now it needs a scrub. Here we are just finishing scrubbing down the boat deck and the bow. They were due for a clean anyway, so overall it's forward progress.

Position: 37°13.91'N, -30°5.91'W

We're constructing a route using PredictWind to run south through the Azores High, that blue section of low winds near the bottom of the screenshot. The green paddle is our current location and the white boat icon is where we'll be in a couple of days. We're doing this, rather than follow the more direct Great Circle route to Bermuda, to minimize our exposure to the storm systems in the typically active North Atlantic. Two rather large systems currently are visible to our north.

Position: 37°11.18'N, -30°9.06'W

The seas are still a little active following the system that passed through yesterday, but we expect them to settle. We're pitching 7.8° and rolling 8.3° (bottom left) with northwest winds to 11 knots on the beam. The waves mostly are on our stern, so this isn't uncomfortable.

Position: 37°7.98'N, -30°12.76'W

Our first ship sighting of the day 24 hours out of Horta.

Position: 36°55.61'N, -30°27.06'W

Today's NOAA Wave Watch III weather model that we pull down through our chartplotter, TimeZero, showed the entire Atlantic covered in 50kt winds ten days out. We expected this was a model bug, as the wave height was only five feet, and the anomaly disappeared in the next download.

Position: 36°31.18'N, -30°50.83'W

This morning we lost heading on our SC30 satellite compass and switched over to a backup. This magnetic-based heading sensor is no nearly as precise as the satellite compass. And, since it was last used and calibrated in Australia, it's not currently well-calibrated. We do have a spare SC30, but the first thing to check is N2k bus health. We put a Maretron N2kMeter on the bus and found 450 errors per second, where there really shouldn't be any at all. This tells us we have a bad device or a connection problem somewhere in the NMEA bus. We've only seen this once before, but it's usually fairly easy to chase down by splitting the bus and checking for errors to find the bad device or section.

Position: 36°26.28'N, -30°56.15'W

Jennifer at the helm monitoring N2k bus errors while James is down below disconnecting devices from the bus to troubleshoot the errors. We're wearing our Sena Expand headsets to communicate.

Position: 36°30.56'N, -30°51.56'W

We isolated the N2k bus problem to one of the 5 or 10 devices near the back of the boat. When they're disconnected, everything is back to working perfectly and there are no errors on the bus. As a last check, we hooked everything back up again and there were still no errors on the bus, which is to say there is some transient error towards the rear of the boat that was either corrected by the prolonged disconnection, or more likely, will return.

Position: 36°22.03'N, -31°1.30'W

Spitfire enjoying the calm seas in the Azores High.

Position: 36°20.52'N, -31°3.13'W

Lowering our Portuguese courtesy flag as we exit their waters.

Position: 36°14.15'N, -31°11.68'W

Wonderfully calm seas as we cruise through the Azores High. This should last for several days.

Position: 36°12.56'N, -31°13.64'W

This NOAA surface analysis chart shows several low pressure systems forming in the Atlantic north of Bermuda. We're happy to be further south in the Azores High. The Azores are the small dots directly below the 1025 at bottom right and we're about where the H is to the southwest.

Position: 35°56.07'N, -31°32.89'W

The tanker Flavin about eight miles away heading from Corpus Christi, Texas to Antwerp.

Position: 35°55.62'N, -31°33.51'W

A large pod of dolphins chasing our bow late in the afternoon.

Position: 35°19.93'N, -32°16.12'W

We just reached 12,000 hours on our John Deere 6068AFM75 main engine. Our Deere has never failed to start and, more importantly, it's never stopped when we were using it. Nothing makes you respect an engine more than being 1,000 nautical miles off shore in a single-engine boat. This engine has been simply amazing.

Position: 35°4.00'N, -32°34.26'W

We are fighting some negative current and making only 5.7 knots. You can see by the green course line that the autopilot is trying to steer us more south to conteract the current pushing us north.

Position: 34°57.75'N, -32°41.42'W

We just put the clocks back another two hours to UTC -03:00 (in Greenland daylight savings time). We;ll make one more two-hour adjustment as we get closer to the Eastern time zone in the US.

Position: 34°56.59'N, -32°42.72'W

Conditions remain wonderfully calm, with below 5 knots (upper right) and pitch and roll 4.7° and 6.7° respectively (lower left).

Position: 34°52.28'N, -32°47.66'W

We found this large seabird trapped in the port walkway beside the pilot house today. The walkway is so deep and narrow that it can't fly away, and it was unable to jump up the steep stairs to the boat deck. We helped it up the stairs, gave it more "runway space" and it took off and flew away just fine.

Position: 34°3.90'N, -33°38.87'W

The temperatures are rising—the water (lower left) is 73.7°F (23° C) and the air (middle) is 70.1° (21° C).

Position: 33°52.52'N, -33°58.83'W

Large clumps of this gold-colored seaweed cover the water surface as we proceed.

Position: 33°51.73'N, -34°1.87'W

The 144ft (44m) superyacht Almost Eighty en route to Gibraltar.

Position: 33°57.17'N, -33°45.73'W

We're well within the Azores High now, about the latitude of Bermuda, and have turned west to proceed to Charleston.

Position: 33°51.38'N, -34°3.26'W

The key with ensuring that fuel bladders don't shift underway is to have them very full so fuel can't slosh around in them. Here James is demonstrating how full ours are by standing on one and not sinking in at all. They are very full. We left Dublin, into 25-30 knots of wind and fairly large swell and, even in rough water, the bladders hardly show a ripple, looking almost like rigid tanks.

The is the seventh time we've used two 300-gallon standard ATL deck fuel bladders and they still are in great shape. We're really impressed with the quality and longevity of the ATL bladders.

Position: 33°48.40'N, -34°14.74'W

Beautiful sunset at sea on our second night out from Horta.

Position: 33°18.07'N, -36°1.69'W

We found freshwater in the bilge this morning. On investigation, we also found freshwater in the bilge underneath the master stateroom and traced it down to the HVAC in the master stateroom. The condensate tray was not draining and overflowing.

Position: 33°17.45'N, -36°3.61'W

Here we have the bilge at the foot of the master stateroom berth open to investigate the HVAC drain manifold at bottom right that carries the HVAC condensation into the grey water tank. Between the tank and the manifold we have a white Hepvo valve (upper left) to prevent grey water tank odors from reaching the house.

Position: 33°15.72'N, -36°9.02'W

Jennifer was on the bow checking for good venting from the grey water tank and found this flying fish. We're wearing our Sena Expand headsets to communicate. They're really working out well.

Position: 33°16.90'N, -36°5.34'W

The Hepvo valve works well and has been in place since the boat was new. But we haven't used the HVAC for several years and the valve was plugged with a thick sludge. You can see pieces of it in the sink.

Position: 33°16.62'N, -36°6.20'W

The old Hepvo valve wasn't in great shape after a decade, so we decided to just replace it with a spare. We have these installed on all drains into the greywater tank and were expecting these to be a fragile part, so have several spares. But this is perhaps the second one we've replaced—they've lasted surprisingly well.

Position: 33°7.14'N, -36°35.56'W

Conditions remain excellent in the Azores High, with winds (upper right) less than 5 knots and pitch and roll (lower left) 6.1° and 4.5° respectively. We;re doing 7.1 knots (middle left) at 1.19 nm/gallon (middle right).

Position: 32°49.69'N, -37°18.47'W

The tanker Gas Gala en route to the Suez Canal.

Position: 32°49.17'N, -37°19.71'W

We've got a large storm system coming that will push the Azores High down and extend into our path. The system still is quite unpredictable and the models really vary as to the route to follow for best conditions. Each colored line represents a route based on the weather models listed at the bottom left of the PredistWind screenshot. The model we've mostly been using, ECMWF, is the black line that extends way up north. We're not keen in heading far north at this point, given that would put us in the path of subsequent systems, so plan to keep heading west at roughly this latitude and see how things develop.

Position: 32°28.10'N, -38°10.52'W

Conditions remain excellent, with less than 5 knots of wind (upper right) and 3.4° of pitch and 4.4° of roll (lower left).

Position: 32°16.84'N, -38°37.29'W

We've been seeing more and more of this gold-colored seaweed covering the water surface in huge swaths.

Update 05/21: We've since learned this is the Sargasso Sea, the only sea without a land boundary.

Position: 32°7.97'N, -39°0.54'W

Spitfire dozing in his new favourite sleeping location, tucked in between two pillows in the corner of the pilot house off-watch berth.

Position: 32°2.97'N, -39°18.06'W

We've consumed enough fuel now that we can drain the 360-gallon forward bladder. Here we have a fuel hose attached and are pumping it through a filter and into the main tanks (see Fuel for the Crossing for details on this system). We can pump about 100 gallons per hour, so this 360-gallon tank will pump down in about 3.5 hours.

Position: 32°2.65'N, -39°19.19'W

Since we had a drain blockage with the stateroom HVAC systems, and haven't used the pilot house air conditioning for a while either, we checked to ensure it was draining properly. No problems there.

Position: 31°59.93'N, -39°30.82'W

Changing the main engine primary fuel filter. This one went 465 hours, which is a fairly typical interval for it. The old filter is black, indicating asphaltenes are building up in the fuel tank. But with fuel filter life as good as it is, even in rough water, the tanks still are in pretty good shape.

Position: 32°0.06'N, -39°33.60'W

Tipping up the forward bladder to move the fuel down to the drain outlet to pull as much fuel as possible out of it prior to cleaning and storage.

Position: 32°0.33'N, -39°38.82'W

Giving the forward bladder a scrub before drying and stowing it.

Position: 32°4.36'N, -40°8.83'W

The cargo ship Navios Utmost en route from Freeport, Bahamas to the Suez Canal.

Position: 32°5.38'N, -40°14.69'W

Sunset over calm seas on our fourth night out from Horta.

Position: 32°13.23'N, -40°59.94'W

The tanker Patris five miles to our south heading east to Sines, Portugal.

Position: 32°18.58'N, -41°30.84'W

The weather routes continue to diverge as the the best route to take with the upcoming weather system using PredictWind's comfort (as opposed to fastest) setting. The green paddle at right is our current location, the white boat icon is where we will be in four days following the ECMWF model, and the white dots are where we would be on the each of the other models. Both ECMWF and SPIRE, considered the most accurate models, indicate we should head directly west and the the system will pass to our north.

Position: 32°19.27'N, -41°34.74'W

Fresh kiwi fruit with our breakfast this morning.

Position: 32°9.44'N, -42°23.28'W

The PredictWind weather data shows we're in for about 24 hours of rough weather in 3-4 days. In the screenshot, we've imported the data into a spreadsheet and colorized three columns. The first column is wave height, and is colored green if the waves are less than 4 feet or the wave period is more than 1.3 times the height, orange if the wave height is less than 7 feet or the period is 1-1.3 times the height, and red for everything else. The second column is wave direction, colored green if the waves are coming from the direction of 50° on either side of the stern, red for 50° on either side of the bow, and orange otherwise. The final column is wave period divided by height and is colored the same as for wave height, but only using the wave period part of the formula.

Strictly speaking this table is not needed, but we find it convenient to see rough weather conditions by colorization and to monitor how a weather system is evolving over time. We also find gathering and studying this date useful prior to an ocean crossing to learn what to expect. This is partly how we decided to follow a more southern route to the US through the Azores High.

Position: 31°58.62'N, -43°32.47'W

Fabulous sunset on our sixth day out from Horta.

Position: 31°53.55'N, -44°22.73'W

Air-popped popcorn makes a great midnight watch snack.

Position: 31°52.35'N, -44°47.74'W

The 65ft (20 m) pleasure craft Miss Pezi passing 3.5 miles to our south en route for Delgada, Portugal. The metal-hulled vessel is built in a style similar to the Nordhavn 62.

Position: 31°44.55'N, -46°11.72'W

Spitfire doing what he does best (or at least what he does most) on passage: sleeping in the offwatch berth.

Position: 31°43.70'N, -46°20.92'W

Pork tacos for dinner.

Position: 31°42.93'N, -46°59.96'W

The latest weather route indicates that the upcoming weather system has shifted south, so we will as well. The red boat icon is where we are now and the blue icon is where we, and the system, will be two days from now on Monday.

Position: 31°39.71'N, -47°27.15'W

We're passing through the leading edge of that weather system. The winds are light at 10 knots, but the waves are about 6ft (1.4m) on 7.5 seconds on the bow, and our average pitching motion over the past five minutes (lower left) has increased to 11.4°. But we're still making good speed at 7.4 knots with a fuel economy of 1.08nm/gallon.

Position: 31°34.96'N, -48°33.37'W

The weather models are back to having us head west again. The blue line is our previous route and the red our new course. It appears that this time of year the weather systems are unstable and difficult to predict with accuracy, even only a couple of days out.

Position: 31°34.88'N, -48°35.05'W

Looking ahead, a major storm will cover much of the Atlantic as we are arriving into Charleston in a week or so. The red boat icon is where we are now and the blue icon is where we will be in 8-9 days.

Position: 31°35.72'N, -48°55.00'W

The vehicle carrier Gral. San Martin was en route to Cotonou, Benin in West Africa when it suddenly made a 90-degree turn towards us, slowed, and eventually was just drifting. We're guessing they had a mechanical problem and 15-20 minutes later they were back underway on the same course as previously.

Position: 31°38.06'N, -49°2.96'W

We noticed some soot on the floor of the engine room and appear to have a minor exhaust failure. It's not bad but there is a small amount of soot being forced into the ER past the exhaust cladding at the flexible wrinkle belly segment area. We suspect the gaskets on either side of the wrinkle belly are leaking or perhaps the wrinkle belly itself cracked. It's making a minor mess on the floor but is not a problem for now. Unless it gets worse, we'll just service it on arrival.

Position: 31°39.09'N, -49°6.48'W

Conditions are worsening as we pass through the leading edge of the weather system. The winds have picked up to 20kts on the bow, we're now pitching and rolling (lower left) 12.2° and 11.8° respectively, and our speed has fallen to 4.8kts at a fuel economy of 1.08nm/gallon. It's rare that our fuel economy and speed are both that bad as the same time.

Position: 31°41.29'N, -49°13.93'W

Our engine room temperature measured on the forward bulkhead is 104°, much hotter than we've seen for a while, but the ER temp probe that we use to display data on our Maretron N2kView screen was reading several degrees higher than this. We checked the calibration on the ER temp probe and it's reading 3F high. It might just be the temp sensor is just slightly biased, but the rails around the engine are much hotter than usual and wI suspect that is due to the exhaust leak. One final factor that will raise the ER temperature a bit higher than we have seen for years is we are running the most of the house air conditioners right now and the two alternators are putting out fairly high power levels with one running a case temp of 202F and the other at 184F. These alternators will contribute enough heat to raise the temps by 3 or 4F as well.

Position: 31°47.48'N, -49°34.91'W

The cargo ship Liberty Grace en route to Port Said, Egypt.

Position: 31°52.61'N, -49°52.22'W

We're routing to the south to avoid the building weather system north of us, that will have influence quite a distance south. The red boat icon is our current position and the blue icon is where we would be in a day or so on our previous westerly course (blue). Seas at that point would be 13ft on 8 seconds. This isn't dangerous, but would be uncomfortable, so we've altered course south on a new route.

Position: 31°54.83'N, -49°59.78'W

We've passed through the leading edge of the weather system into relatively calm conditions behind. The winds are less than 5 knots and pitch and roll are 7.0° and 6.6° respectively. We're not making great speed though, at only 5.9 knots to achieve 1.18 nm/gallon.

Position: 31°50.32'N, -50°11.38'W

A view to our current overall route to Charleston, making a big southerly detour around the weather system to our north. This adds about 100 miles to the total distance, but is worth it for better weather conditions.

Position: 31°23.52'N, -50°50.91'W

The tanker Traiano Knutsen passing about 12 miles to our north en route to Corpus Christi, Texas. The ship is on a direct Great Circle route, so is on a more northerly course heading for a more southerly port. It takes worse than these conditions to get the big boats off the direct path.

Position: 31°18.10'N, -51°0.78'W

We have consumed enough fuel that there is enough space in the tanks below to pump the aft deck fueal into the main tanks. We prefer to have all the fuel below decks if we're heading into rougher water.

Position: 31°3.06'N, -51°33.40'W

The radar shows a major squall system up ahead.

Position: 31°2.32'N, -51°35.31'W

Heavy rains as we pass through the squall.

Position: 31°2.20'N, -51°35.62'W

Our KVH V7-HTS mini-VSAT has been rock solid throughout the trip from Dublin, with only brief outages as it switches satellites. We lost connectivity as we passed through the squall, but it reconnected quickly. We really depend on the system, and few faults on the boat capture our attention more than seeing our V7-HTS searching for a satellite.

Position: 30°41.48'N, -52°28.29'W

We're into the trailing edge of that storm system now. Four hours ago, the winds shot up to steady 30 knots (wind graph at middle right) and the seas are are about 13 feet on 7 seconds. We're seeing a lot of boat motion, with pitch and roll 14.3° and 20.5° over the past five minutes (lower left). And worst of all, at 1400 RPM we're currently making almost no headway into the heavy seas running at 2.8 knots and sometimes below 2 knots. At this pace, we'll be arriving in late July to early August :-) Our boat is good and strong, but fuel economy and speed made good is poor when heading directly into tight head seas.

We also are well below our fuel economy goal of 1.16nm/gallon at only 0.655nm/gallon. For this trip, we have lots of fuel, so we only need to maintain 1.2 nm/gallon. In the past, it's always been the case that if we just slowed down a bit more we can hit the needed mileage. This is the first time where we've seen it where the boat can't hit achieve the needed fuel economy at any speed. It won't be a problem, because these conditions will be relatively brief, but it did catch our attention that we can't get up over 3/4 nm/gallon.

The "drive to lights" at middle right are both orange. The "drive to lights" system is what we use to maintain the boat within the fuel economy we need to arrive at a destination with the configured amount of reserve fuel. The system is very simple. If we are within our fuel economy range, both lights are green. If we're above our range, the left light goes orange to indicate we should speed up and if we're below our goal, the right light shows orange to indicate we should slow down. And if we're going much to fast, they're both orange to call attention to it. We also can use the system to meet a time-based deadline.

Position: 30°35.30'N, -52°45.02'W

We're taking a lot of green water over the bow, so much so that seaweed has gotten caught in the wipers.

Position: 30°36.01'N, -52°51.32'W

We're at about the worse point in the storm with winds steady in the high 30s and a peak of 43 knots. These are not the roughest conditions we've seen, but are up there. Probably in the top 5. We're in 12-14-ft seas, with some as high as 20 ft, on a ridiculously short 7 seconds. Just moving around in the boat takes care and planning. Some waves tower above the pilot house. Fuel economy and speed continue to be stubbornly poor.

Over the last 12,000 miles we've seen the boat's fuel economy go up and down as conditions change. Like many boats, winds and heavy seas on the bow are inefficient. But we've always found in the past that we can get the fuel economy we want just by slowing down. The conditions we're in today are directly on the bow, and slowing doesn't seem to make much difference on the fuel economy. We decided to study it in more detail and run 5-minute periods at different RPMs and look at speed and fuel economy achieved. Slowing does improve fuel economy, but we can't get more than 2/3 nm/gallon at any speed in these conditions. The following shows resulting speed and fuel economy at RPMs ranging from 1000 to 1900:

• 1000: 1.1, 0.61
• 1200: 1.6, 0.57
• 1500: 2.7, 0.57
• 1600: 2.9, 0.55
• 1600: 3.0, 0.64
• 1700: 3.2, 0.50
• 1700: 3.2, 0.50
• 1800: 3.6, 0.48
• 1800: 3.8, 0.52
• 1800: 3.8, 0.53
• 1900: 3.9, 0.49

Position: 30°37.90'N, -53°0.47'W

The tanker Alessandro D P en route to Antwerp.

Position: 30°40.26'N, -53°31.33'W

Conditions have improved markedly. We're back within our fuel economy range and are making 6.8 knots. The seas are still up, although the period between waves is lengthening, and were pitching and rolling at 10.4° and 20.1° respectively. That's not great, but is much more comfortable than the 14.3° pitch we were seeing earlier, probably becasue the wave frequency now is longer so the boat motion is less rapid.

Position: 30°39.56'N, -53°41.04'W

The maze of different PredictWind recommended routes over time behind us as we picked our way through the storm.

Position: 30°38.97'N, -53°49.20'W

Westbound ship doing 11.0 knots overtaking us about 8 miles to the north.

Position: 30°38.63'N, -53°53.75'W

We're still feeling the effects of the storm that passed, with pitch and roll at 10.2° and 17° (lower left). The 24-hour pitch, roll and wind speed graphs (near center) show that conditions have improved, and the winds are settling down.

Position: 30°37.15'N, -54°20.74'W

The storm system still packs a punch, but is passing away to the northeast behind us.

Position: 30°34.77'N, -54°44.13'W

When conditions are at all rough, we've learned that if we sleep wedged in the narrow floor space beside the bed, the motion is a lot less annoying and we sleep far better (for James' sleep shift, he sleeps on the other side where there is a little more space). Using that trick, we find it takes quite rough conditions before we start having sleep problems. This also avoids the risk that befell James 8 years ago where a bigger wave tossed him out of the berth and into the head doorway frame. Sleeping on the floor looks a bit odd, but it ends up being a remarkably comfortable way of dealing with rough conditions.

Position: 30°29.22'N, -55°21.73'W

We'd emptied the bulk of the fuel out of the cockpit bladders prior to the weather system hitting. Now that things have settled down a bit, we can complete the job by tipping them up to drain out the last few gallons before stowing them.

Position: 30°28.27'N, -55°28.24'W

Giving the cockpit bladders a quick freshwater spray and a scrub prior to stowing them in the flybridge brow.

Position: 30°24.29'N, -55°55.20'W

Despite having the door latched at the bottom, the water pressure from waves hitting the pilot house door during the storm forced enough water inside to soak the carpet. We're using a floor fan to dry it.

Position: 30°20.96'N, -56°17.71'W

Another large storm system is forming to our north, predicted to have 25-ft seas. This system is a little unusual in that is is moving from east to west and will absorb a smaller system off the Florida coast before heading in a more common northeasterly direction. We're heading a long way to the south to avoid the worse impact of the storm. The green paddle shows the current boat location and the white boat icon is where we'll be in about 2.5 days following a more southerly course.

Position: 30°18.57'N, -56°33.90'W

Conditions have improved greatly, with pitch and roll down to 3.3° and 8.5° and the winds less than 15 knots. The only downside is we're not making great progress at 5.7 knots with a fuel economy of 1.09 nm/gallon.

Position: 30°17.76'N, -56°38.84'W

The container ship CMA CGM Ohio en route to Rotterdam.

Position: 30°4.28'N, -57°55.80'W

Whenever we've been thrown around a lot by rough weather, we run the wing and the gen, just to make sure no water has been forced down the exhaust and that they are clean, warm and dry. The red light at bottom left indicates that the gen is running when not needed (we use the main engine rather the gen for underway power) and the orange light at bottom right indicates the wing is running (wing tach is below main engine tach).

And with little change in conditions, other than a degree less of pitch, our speed has increased to 8 knots with a fuel economy of 1.23 nm/gallon compared to 5.7 knots at 1.09 nm/gallon earlier today. Some of this could be due to ocean current, and also slightly calmer seas. The boat is very sensitive to head seas, and climbing waves has a really negative impact on fuel economy.

Position: 30°3.50'N, -58°0.10'W

An overview of our more southerly course. We're about 10 days out of Charleston now, continuing to work south to avoid the impact of the storm system building north of Bermuda.

Position: 29°48.81'N, -58°36.11'W

Conditions remain good as the seas continue to settle down after the storm system. But we're down a knot of speed since earlier today, and are making 7 knots at 1.2 nm/gallon.

Position: 28°59.11'N, -60°15.66'W

If the weather's not bad, we do a full walkaround outside the boat twice a day. We often find flying fish on deck in tropical waters. In the South Pacific, Spitfire would "fish" by sitting in the cockpit and waiting for one to land in front of him.

Position: 28°58.97'N, -60°15.94'W

Dawn looking behind us in calm conditions.

Position: 28°51.66'N, -60°30.51'W

We're currently headed towards the junction of two weather systems, a large and rather intense one northeast of Bermuda and a less powerful one near Florida. The larger system is subtropical storm Ana, the first named storm of the season. The smaller system to the south is being absorbed by Ana directly along our path, but conditions should settle down by the time we reach that point.

Position: 28°43.62'N, -60°46.56'W

Fresh salad for lunch. We can't bring any fresh fruit or vegetables into the US, so we need to consume it all before we arrive.

Position: 28°40.64'N, -60°52.38'W

We're humming along at 6.5 knots (middle left) with a fuel economy of 1.23 nm/gallon (middle right). Pitch and roll are both down to a very comfortable 3.3° and 5.6° respectively, so we can sleep back on the berth instead of the floor.

Position: 28°24.05'N, -61°29.83'W

The tanker Maersk Belfast en route to Veracruz, Mexico.

Position: 28°15.04'N, -62°5.38'W

The seas are up a bit, and really slowing us down. We're only making 4.5 knots at a fuel economy of 1.11 nm/g. When running longer distances, and especially when crossing oceans, we drive to the required fuel economy and decrease or increase speed as necessary to make the distance we need. It's surprising what a difference small variations in conditions make to our speed.

Position: 28°13.83'N, -62°10.21'W

The bulk carrier Shangdong Fu Hui en route from Gibraltar to Myrtle Grove, Louisiana.

Position: 28°0.98'N, -63°0.88'W

We're down to 1,000 miles and less than a week left to reach Charleston.

Position: 27°59.21'N, -63°8.37'W

We often make Mi Goreng noodles for a quick lunch, with some leftover chicken added if we have some. We've generally been able to obtain the noodles easily in Europe the past few years. But we couldn't find them in Bergen, which led us to try Buldak Ramen, our new favourite.

Position: 27°57.24'N, -63°27.48'W

We're passing 226 miles south of Bermuda right now. Our decision to run a southerly route instead of a Great Circle route to avoid the Atlantic storms has worked out well. While we did pass through one weather system, conditions weren't nearly as bad is if we'd been on a more northerly route through the system. We'd prefer to drive straight through to Charleston at this point, but are giving subtropical storm Ana the necessary wide berth that storm requires.

Position: 27°56.18'N, -63°37.85'W

Three of the PredictWind-recommended routes, including the one corresponding to the ECMWF model, indicate we continue on a more southerly course for a bit before turning north. This will put is into back into a high pressure system and keep us safely away from subtropical storm Ana north of Bermuda.

Position: 27°56.17'N, -63°37.96'W

Several ARPA targets, likely fishing vessels. Traffic is starting to pick up slightly as we near the US east coast.

Position: 27°54.50'N, -63°54.72'W

On James' evening check around the outside of the boat, he found the boat deck coated in a film of gasoline, so got to spend the first part of his watch scrubbing down the decks.

Position: 27°54.48'N, -63°54.93'W

One of the gas cans that we have secured on the boat deck cracked in the hot sun and leaked onto the deck. The can is over a decade old so it's lasted well.

Position: 27°53.08'N, -64°10.53'W

Our KVH V7-HTS mini-VSAT has been rock solid without an outage impacting us for years. We're very dependent upon that system, and so those short transitions when it switches satellites bring us stress, even though they are only a minute or two. This evening, the system stopped moving data. James rebooted the antenna and modem, but the system remained down. He plugged a laptop directly into the KVH system to see if there was some on-board routing problem, but it still didn't work. That's bad news for us, because we're a thousand miles from shore without our trusted communications system.

We have backup connectivity available through Inmarsat BGAN, but it is startlingly expensive at 10x the data cost of the KVH system. James called in the fault just before he went off-shift. A couple of hours later, it returned to life. It's so nice having it back, and it was hard to believe it was only a couple of hours.

Position: 27°52.58'N, -64°16.10'W

This ship passing 14 miles to our south never got close enough for us to get AIS details.

Position: 27°50.98'N, -64°33.95'W

The tanker Pacific Sky en route to the Netherlands Antilles.

Position: 27°48.36'N, -65°8.00'W

That storm system we have been skirting south of is now showing up on the NOAA surface analysis as a possible tropical cyclone. This morning it became the first named storm of the season, subtropical storm Ana. Being on passage with a cyclone in our path wasn't the goal when we left :). We diverted an additional 200 miles to the south, which adds a lot of distance to the trip, but allowed us to only see some rough water rather than the dangerous conditions in the center of the storm. This underlines the importance of having lots of fuel on board, because this unusual diversion and the previous added about 300 miles to the trip.

Position: 27°51.90'N, -65°37.69'W

It looks like we "caught" another fish.

Position: 27°53.45'N, -65°52.24'W

We just set the clocks back another two hours and now are on US Eastern time.

Position: 28°2.08'N, -66°50.37'W

A vessel heading east about 7 miles to our south.

Position: 28°3.71'N, -66°55.82'W

Beautiful orange sunset to end our 15th day out of Horta.

Position: 28°6.35'N, -67°4.58'W

We're only 700 miles out of Charleston now, and should be there in four days.

Position: 28°13.15'N, -67°27.28'W

Subtropical storm Ana, the first named storm of the season, to our northeast near Bermuda. We're really glad to have put several hundred miles between us and that system. We figure it cost upwards of 200 additional miles, but from the size of that storm, worth every one of them.

Position: 28°14.78'N, -67°32.68'W

Our speed has been as low as 5.5 knots in the past 12 hours, but we're currently humming along at 7.7 knots with a fuel economy of 1.13 nm/gallon. The winds are less than 5 knots and our pitch and roll is a comfortable 5.8° and 6.1° respectively.

Position: 28°25.80'N, -68°9.49'W

Grapefruit with our breakfast this morning.

Position: 28°47.11'N, -69°20.75'W

The cargo ship City of Hamburg, en route to Hamburg, Germany.

Position: 28°53.37'N, -69°41.73'W

Sunset on our 16th day out of Horta.

Position: 28°54.56'N, -69°45.71'W

We're now up to 8 knots. If we can maintain this, we'll arrive in three days (but there's absolutely no way we will maintain 8 knots.)

Position: 29°11.41'N, -70°42.40'W

Only 500 miles to Charleston. We're getting close.

Position: 29°18.02'N, -71°5.21'W

We're seeing some really beautiful sunrises and sunsets on this trip.

Position: 29°39.14'N, -72°18.23'W

We've not seen much of anything in the water on this run, but did see a gas can today.

Position: 29°42.79'N, -72°30.87'W

Only 400 miles left to to reach Charleston. Conditions are good and we're comfortable, but we're looking forward to getting in.

Position: 29°44.62'N, -72°37.21'W

Amazingly, we're picking up US Coast Guard radio broadcasts more than 300 miles out of Charleston.

Position: 29°53.79'N, -73°9.05'W

A sudden flurry of traffic with the cargo ship Spring Hawk overtaking us from astern en route to Wilmington (bottom target), the tanker Morning Glory passing astern en route to Houston from Antwerp (top target), and the 62-ft (19m) sailing yacht Shaima en route north from the Bahamas.

Position: 30°11.55'N, -74°10.84'W

Our next traffic sighting was also a multi-ship one, this time with two large ships passing on front and behind. The tankers JS Ineos Insight heading to Houston, TX and Yasa Golden Marmara en route to Galveston, TX.

Position: 30°11.88'N, -74°12.06'W

Conditions are excellent, but we're making only 5.8 knots at 1634 RPM with a fuel economy of 1.10 nm/g, which is far below what the boat normally gets.

Position: 30°23.14'N, -74°54.42'W

Conditions certainly are variable. Seven hours ago we making only 5.8 knots with a fuel economy of 1.1 nm/g, now we are doing 8.2 knots at 1895 RPM with an even better fuel economy of 1.18 nm/g, but still far below what the boat normally gets.

Position: 30°35.55'N, -75°42.38'W

Wonderfully calm conditions about 225 miles out of Charleston at 1am, with less than 5 knots of wind.

Position: 30°38.39'N, -75°57.82'W

Conditions remain excellent with only 2 knots of wind (well, excellent if you're passagemaking in a power boat :-)) and clear skies. We're making 8.5 knots at 1.19nm/gallon and expect to arrive tomorrow morning.

Position: 30°41.09'N, -76°12.53'W

We're less than 200 miles from Charleston now. It's exciting to see the US coast so close on the chart.

Position: 30°41.96'N, -76°17.28'W

Supermoon setting over ultra calm seas.

Position: 30°42.82'N, -76°20.69'W

Now that we're a day out of Charleston, we've set our "drive to lights" system into deadline mode to arrive at the marina at 8am. Instead of indicating we should speed up or slow down based on a fuel economy goal, the system now guides us to arrive on at 8am.

Position: 30°59.06'N, -76°56.61'W

Another fabulous Atlantic sunrise.

Position: 31°24.74'N, -77°33.54'W

The last of our celery with shrimp salad pita pockets for lunch today. It's amazingly fresh for being purchased in Dublin five weeks ago.

Position: 31°26.17'N, -77°35.47'W

In a great example of one failure hiding another, we both noticed some black dust around the front of the engine and both assumed it was due to the exhaust leak. But when bigger pieces such as the long narrow one roughly at center started showing up, we noticed it, picked it up, and found that it was rubber rather than soot. If it weren't for that larger piece, we might not have noticed. The rubber is obviously from the main engine accessory drive belt.

Position: 31°30.36'N, -77°41.91'W

To check on the main engine accessory drive belt, we need to stop the main engine and run on the wing. With only had 20 hours of run time left to reach Charleston, it would be easy to just hope that the belt could hang on that long and not go to work on the 180°F main engine in the 117°F engine room. But if the belt breaks, coolant stops flowing and the engine overheats very quickly and it's possible to do serious damage before an operator acts on it because it happens so quickly. So we started up the wing and shut down the main to investigate. The wing tachometer is visible, showing 2342 RPM, below the main engine tachometer.

Position: 31°30.36'N, -77°41.91'W

It's a good thing we did check on main engine accessory drive belt condition. It was in rough shape.

Position: 31°30.43'N, -77°42.02'W

Another view to the main engine belt from the top. It's in astoundingly poor shape. None of the idlers appear to have bearing problems, but there's no way a belt this new should fail. We only have a used belt in stock, since we just changed this one. We've got a couple of more belts on order, but we need to investigate what caused this failure in more detail. It's possible that a new belt stored 12 years could break down, so it's conceivable that its just a belt failure, but we won't conclude that until we check everything else carefully.

Position: 31°30.63'N, -77°42.38'W

We don't have a new belt in stock, so we put the best used belt back on. It's in very good condition and should last well. We'll watch closely to see if there's any signs of wear, and we've got a couple of belts on order. Once we get those, we'll put a new belt on and very carefully check for any sources of problems.

Position: 31°30.89'N, -77°42.84'W

We found another "spare cat" underneath the master stateroom berth where we stow the spare main engine accessory drive belts.

Position: 31°37.82'N, -77°54.51'W

About to cross the Gulf Stream on our final night before arriving into Charleston. All the PredictWind-recommended tracks angle slightly north of the direct path as we cross the current.

Position: 31°52.26'N, -78°5.93'W

A US Navy Spearhead-class high-speed catamaran heading south at speed against the Gulf Stream. Most boats would run outside the main stream, but they're not paying the fuel bill, so 17-knots upstream it is :-).

Position: 31°55.23'N, -78°9.37'W

Our grey water tank sensor was tangled in hair and not reading properly. We cleaned it up and it's now functioning properly again. The grey water sensor seems to hang up every 4-6 months.

Position: 31°55.27'N, -78°9.41'W

We just crossed under 100 miles left to go and are seeing lot of traffic, likely fishing boats.

Position: 31°56.91'N, -78°11.71'W

Dirona's water maker is equipped with a media filter (essentially a small sand filter similar to those used for swimming pools) prior to the pre-filter. This has the upside of allowing our media filters to last an entire year, and we just have to backflush the media filter every couple of months. It's due today and so it's being back-flushed overboard. the slight color visible in the water means it's not quite clean yet.

Position: 32°0.60'N, -78°18.15'W

A spectacular sunset on our final night at sea.

Position: 32°9.77'N, -78°37.08'W

We initially were doing over 7 knots as we entered the Gulf Stream, but now have slowed to a crawl at 3.7 knots. Fighting the Gulf Stream is slow work.

Position: 32°22.64'N, -79°4.50'W

The cargo ship X-Press Anglesey heading towards us from Charleston with the container ship Santa Loretta approaching from the north.

Position: 32°39.95'N, -79°41.31'W

Raising our Q flag as we approach the US coast to indicate we require clearance. This is the first time since 2016 that we've raised a Q flag without another country's flag as well.

Position: 32°40.23'N, -79°41.91'W

Our speed picked back up once we escaped the Gulf Stream and we're now doing 7.9 knots in the flood current.

Position: 32°40.92'N, -79°43.35'W

Reporting our arrival through ROAM (Reporting Offsite Arrival—Mobile), the US Customs and Border Patrol reporting app.

Position: 32°41.45'N, -79°44.47'W

Conversing with the skipper of another pleasure craft who radioed to welcome us home.

Position: 32°42.97'N, -79°47.37'W

Normally US Customs would clear us through via a video conference using the ROAM app, but it wasn't fully functioning that day. They instead interviewed us by phone and we're now cleared in.

Position: 32°43.93'N, -79°49.56'W

A very empty fridge, especially compared to how full it was when we departed Dublin a month earlier.

Position: 32°44.77'N, -79°51.09'W

Charleston pilot boat heading to sea. We're seeing a ton of traffic now, mostly pleasure craft, as we near Charleston.

Position: 32°45.09'N, -79°51.72'W

Flag-raising at Fort Sumter, where in 1861 confederate soldiers fired the first shots of the American Civil War on the Union-held fort and captured it the next day.

Position: 32°45.78'N, -79°55.47'W

The cable-stayed towers of the the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. The bridge opened in 2005 and at 1,546 feet (471 m) is the third longest cable-stayed bridge in the Western Hemisphere.

Position: 32°46.22'N, -79°56.48'W

Approaching the Safe Harbor Charleston marina, our home for the next few weeks.

Position: 32°46.65'N, -79°57.14'W

We're definitely back in the US—nowhere else in the world have we seen center-consoles with such massive horsepower. This boat has 3,135 HP from its 5 V8 engines.

Position: 32°46.99'N, -79°56.70'W

Getting our first COVID-19 vaccinations within 2 hours of landing. It's great to have that process finally underway.

Position: 32°47.57'N, -79°56.90'W

Spitfire having his blood pressure checked at Charleston Harbor Veterinarians via a cuff on his tail. He's been having trouble with his hind legs collapsing, so we took him in for a full examination and bloodwork. We suspected possible low potassium levels, a common problem for cats with kidney disease, but all his blood readings were close to normal. He's still playful, and gets around fine, but he's getting a lot more cautious since sometimes his legs let go.

Position: 32°46.79'N, -79°56.64'W

Passing the garden at Wortham House on our way back from the vet. The striking property is listed in the Garden Conservatory of America's top 50 American Gardens.

Position: 32°46.62'N, -79°57.09'W

We found one more flying fish in the cockpit as we set out the table.

Position: 32°46.65'N, -79°57.14'W

We had a lot of Amazon packages waiting for us at Safe Harbour Charleston. Here we are returning to Dirona with our first load.

Position: 32°46.62'N, -79°57.08'W

Our second load of Amazon packages.

Position: 32°46.62'N, -79°57.09'W

The final load of packages for the day. We've got lots more coming over the next few days though. It's great to be back in the land of 2-day and overnight shipping.

Position: 32°46.62'N, -79°57.08'W

Enjoying our first evening back in the US at Charleston after a big day of clearing through, getting vaccinated, taking Spitfire to the vet and unpacking dozens of Amazon boxes. Picture courtesy of Nordhavn 41-11 owners Pierce and Janet Guyer, who stopped by to welcome us home.

Position: 32°46.62'N, -79°57.08'W

Dirona's first sunset in the US since departing Newport in May of 2017.