Noon Report June 14, 2007 Position 32-53.16 N 61-46-16 W as of 12:00 EDT Thursday, June 14, 2007 Course 095 deg M Speed 6.2 kts @ 1700 RPM 1,652 NM to go to Horta, Faial, Azores Distance made good since departure: 164 NM (average 6.3 kts) Total fuel consumed 82 gals, average 3.0 GPH, fuel remaining 1398 gal Conditions: Wind 170 deg M @ 13 kts. swells 3-4 ft, mostly overcast, visibility excellent. Barometer 1017.0 mb rising slowly. Sea water temp 74 deg F, air temp 74 deg F. ETA Horta: May 25-26, 2007 Med Bound 2007's visit to Bermuda is history, and all Med Bound yachts are back at sea, all of us much the better for the experience thanks to Bermuda's legendary hospitality. In Bermuda we discovered two boat problems: a leaking stabilizer actuator and a broken icemaker fitting. Vic Kuzmovick, head of Naiad Florida, quickly dispatched a service technician to Bermuda to replace the leaking actuator. Tech David D'Orazio arrived Friday afternoon with tools and parts in hand and went to work immediately. We tested everything in the morning and he left in time to catch a noon flight out of Bermuda. The entire fix was taken care of under warranty! What a terrific company Naiad is to deal with. I can say from long experience that Vic Kuzmovich and Naiad set a very high standard for customer service! Our icemaker issue, a broken Sub-Zero part, was not so easily fixed, nor was it of such importance. We still have ice, but must manually turn the icemaker on and off--not a big deal. We'll replace the broken part when we get to it! Back to the real news: N62 Grey Pearl and N47 Imagine departed Royal Bermuda Yacht Club Monday, Pearl bound for Annapolis and Imagine for Newport. Both needed to get moving , and weather router Bob Jones called the conditions they'd face difficult but not dangerous, something their reports bear out. Until today Imagine reported a pleasant trip with moderate winds and seas, but today's report had her approaching the Gulf Stream off Newport with 9-12 foot head seas and 25-30 knot headwinds-nasty stuff, indeed. Grey Pearl reports the she has had a rough ride all the way, her speed reduced to less than eight knots by headwinds and head seas. Both yachts have experienced crew onboard and are prepared to tough it out. N47 Summer Skis, N62 New Frontier and N40 Beso, bound for Newport, departed RBYC at 10 am yesterday, minutes ahead of Horta-bound group, Bluewater, N55 Salty Dawg and N44 Moana Kuewa. We had taken a cab to check out at St. Georges, a painless process. This morning Skipper Jim Fuller sent this report from Summer Skis: "The Newport Gang has survived it's first of 4 nights at sea. We started off in some substantial seas and wind from the west at 15-20. As the night progressed it abated somewhat, and we are now pretty comfortable. Seas still on the beam but less than yesterday. We have 511 miles to go and the crew of all the boats seem to be holding off any mutiny plans at the current moment. Joey's line did catch a fish. Jer reeled it in because Joey was asleep. It was a mahi mahi of the huge size of 12". The crew of New Frontier took pity on it and sent it back to its mother. So I guess we have to give Joey the benefit of the doubt and give him his fish." This is taken from my rough log written yesterday: "0730 Impromptu meeting at the YC to discuss Bob's latest. Joint decision made to go. Off to St. Georges by cab with driver Cornell to clear out. Outbound clearance is quick and mostly painless, once a few bureaucratic T's are crossed and I's are dotted. I spy the sailing yacht Frog Kiss at the dock and introduce myself to the son of Patrick Mouligne, who is juts checking in after completing Leg 1 of the Bermuda 1-2 Race-singlehanded and ahead of his father's Nordhavn 46 as he pointed out. "1005 Underway from RBYC. We are sent off by Commodore Andy Cox and ace Dockmaster/Marina Manager James Barnes. Newport-bound group off the docks first. Moana Kuewa last off the docks, with Christine Bauman running hard at the last minute to buy Euros then get her yacht club bill paid. We did circles in the harbor waiting for Moana Kuewa, then called Bermuda Harbor Radio, and received clearance to depart. Local Nordhavn fans Donald and Mavis Cave are our escort vessel in their Mainship, accompanying us nearly to the Spit Buoy off St. Georges. "We proceed out the South Channel, following about a mile astern of the Newport-bound yachts. Much chatter on the radio back and forth. "By agreement with Salty Dawg and Moana Kuewa, the Horta-bound group is running at about 6.3 knots. For Bluewater that's 1700 RPMs, several hundred RPMs below our usual speed but a good speed for conserving fuel on this, the longest non-stop run we've undertaken in this boat. Having enough fuel for this 1,818-mile run is something we need to pay close attention to. We notice that the boat is quiet and the engine room running much cooler at these low RPMs and with no generator on line. "About three hours out from RBYC as we're leaving Bermuda waters we receive a VHF radio call from Patrick Mouligne aboard Frog Kiss II. Patrick wishes Med Bound well, reporting his trip was excellent and that he already likes his "new" Nordhavn 46 a great deal. His is what I call "the First Lady of Nordhavn," the very first Nordhavn yacht ever built. "By late afternoon, the morning overcast gives way to sunny skies. Winds are on the starboard quarter at 6-8 knots and seas are 2-4. Water temp is 75 degrees and air temp about the same. The boat is open, the fishing line trails in our wake, and it couldn't be nicer. No fish" Today dawned overcast with light rain, but the winds and seas were still down, giving us a comfortable ride. We saw just a couple of ships overnight; this run is mostly out of the shipping lanes so we expect to see few ships along the way. All three yachts on this leg have two-way AIS units, so it's very easy to keep track of one another. We're running in the same kind of loose inverted-V formation we used on the way to Bermuda, but with three yachts it's much easier. Bluewater is at the top of the V with Salty Dawg a mile back to port and Moana Kuewa a mile back to starboard-close enough to keep an eye on one another day and night yet far enough away to pose no danger. Aboard Bluewater we use three-hour watches, starting at 2100 or 9 pm. I take the first watch, Judy relieves me at midnight, and George relieves her at 0300. I'm back on watch at 0600, fresh from nearly six hours of sleep, then Judy is back at 0900. From 1200 to 2100, no one "officially" has the watch-it falls to whomever is available. Judy does all the meals, so George and I usually split off the daytime watches informally. With only three yachts, rolls calls are quick and easy; we're doing them at 0900 and 2100. We do a full power run about 1145 each day to run up the engines to full RPMs, blow out the carbon, and check the fuel filter vacuum gauges-Lugger Bob Senter pointed out in a seminar that the vacuum gauge readings are valid only at full power. I like to think that a short full power run will help identify problems well because they become serious; I hope I'm right! Many yachts measure fuel consumption precisely using an expensive device called a FloScan. The FloScan is so accurate, to quote Dennis Bruckel on Salty Dawg, it shows a burn rate of a tenth of a gallon or two (per hour) more going up a swell than down a swell! Both Salty Dawg and Moana Kuewa have FloScans, and both skippers have high confidence in their accuracy. Alas, Bluewater does not have one so we do our fuel measurement the old fashioned way-by looking at sight gauges, estimating, and using a table created for our boat using an Excel spreadsheet. This morning I used the Nordhavn 47's elegant fuel system to measure our actual fuel consumption at 1700 RPMs with no generator running. It came to 3.0 gallons per hour, and I should hasten to add that's approximate at best: watching the fuel level using a sight gauge on a rolling boat is never going to be precise! Still, 3 GPH is consistent with our past experience and what our engine manufacturer, Lugger, calls for running at 1700 RPMs. If we look at our 1,818-mile passage from Bermuda to Horta and divide by a speed of advance (SOA) of 6.3 knots, Bluewater should be underway on this passage for about 290 hours or 12 days. Multiply that by 3 gallons per hour and we SHOULD use less than 900 of our 1480 gallons. Ah, but that does not include the possibility of more hours for a weather divserion or for heavy headwinds and head seas (let's add, say, another 20% ) which could take us up to main engine fuel consumption of 1,044 gallons. Then add in some generator time, for openers let's say an average of 2 hours per day at one GPH, for a generator burn of 26 gallons. It all comes to an admittedly soft fuel burn estimate of 1,070 gallons, leaving a reserve of 410 gallons-roughly 28%. I hope it works out that way! In fact, we'll watch it day by day. If we reach the halfway point with what we expect, perhaps we can ratchet up the speed and generator time a bit and arrive with less. One more consideration: we need to take on at least 1,325 gallons (350 liters) in Horta to qualify for duty free fuel pricing. As I finish this up at 1400, I note that the wind has come around to SSE and our boat speed at 1700 RPMs is down to 5.6 to 5.7 knots-it may just be a longer trip than we think! --Milt, Judy, George and Schipperke Katy -- Milt Baker Bluewater Nordhavn 47 #32 http://www.bluewaternav.com A compilation of reports from Med Bound 2007 may be viewed at <http://www.nordhavn.com>. Click on Med Bound 2007.