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Leaving Charleston
Deja Vu23 years ago we were leaving Charleston heading North for our first off shore sail. We left at night heading for Beaufort and ran into a storm. After the storm we got caught in the surf around Myrtle Beach and nearly ran aground. Then we got in another storm around Frying pan shoals, so by the time we got to Beaufort we were really beat. And what was going to be just 48 hours turned out to be 72 hours. But today we left at sunrise and headed out with the tide.
Winds were 14g20 out of the SE so we were on a broad reach. Sam and I decided to try the spinnaker pole to pole out the Genoa. We tried this on the journey south but the lifting harness for the pole broke so we never got it going. That was one of the things we fixed. So This was the best opportunity to try it. So we put the wire halyard on the lifting harness and the spare halyard on the jaw end. We lifted it up on the rocking deck and got it on the Genoa much easier than we thought. It does want to swing around however, and I'm sure it would have made a good video if there had been a way to film our escapade. Every time the boat heels or rocks the pole which is pretty heavy swings around and hits anything in it's path. Once we got the jaws on the line (jaw down) we put other end in the cup and we were off and running! Wing and wing poled out is amazing. We stayed on this rig all the way to Cape Fear. One time during the night I needed to jibe so I made sure that I put the wind off the port side instead of the starboard and jibed the main but left the Genoa poled out to the starboard. It worked fine. Then when I jibed back we were back on wing and wing again.
When we got to Cape fear in the morning the winds died and unable to keep the sails filled in only 5 knots of wind we took everything down and motored the last hour to the inlet.
at about 2116Z with clear skies we heard a huge boom. We think it was a sonic boom and there are black biting flies out here even miles and miles off shore.
