Morehead City, NC - St. Thomas, USVI

We arrived in St. Thomas on Thursday, 15 November after a passage of 1428 miles in 13 days, 6 hrs. We averaged 4.5 kts, or 107.7 miles per day.  Our best day was 135 miles and our worst day was 93 miles.

We left before dawn on Friday, 2 November and set sail in lumpy seas to make tracks for the Gulf Stream.  We used the remnants from Sandy to propel us forward at a good clip, but the seas were such that the autopilot wouldn't hold so we handsteered the first night in short watches. We watched the ocean temperature climb 10 degrees as we crossed overnight.

After the Gulf Stream, we wanted to make miles south to avoid a developing low (which eventually brought snow to NJ).  Luckily we made excellent time on a brisk SW wind and were able to get ahead of the trailing cold front.  The HAM radio worked very well to provide weather reports and hopefully some of you were able to use the shiptrak website to watch our daily position updates.

We cruised on a southeasterly heading for 7 days, making miles and settling into a routine.  The nights were chilly but the days were pleasant if still a little lumpy.  We eventually made it to 65W, the longitude of our destination with 600 miles still to cover straight south.  This worked well as we soon encountered the easterly trade winds.

About 2 days from St. Thomas the winds abandoned us and left us frustrated for a day, which resulted in an arrival a day later than originally thought.  We finally arrived around lunch time on the 15th (Thursday) and immediately jumped in the water after anchoring, very happy to have safely arrived.  We picked up our friend Shawn at the airport and started making plans for our next couple weeks of adventuring with Shawn and Meg.  We moored in a marina Friday night to clean the boat, our clothes and ourselves and restock provisions and will be on our way back to the water later today.  When able, we have a great video of the trip down that we'll upload to vimeo, but it might take a few days until we can find enough bandwidth, so stay tuned!