NCC Rundown Part Three!

We arrived at checkpoint one (Taylor Creek Marina in Beaufort) with our spirits lifted by the favorable wind shift that carried us across the Newport River. We sailed into the checkpoint just as Jarhead and Michigama were heading out. After jockeying for position to give them a clear path to depart, we finally made it to shore. Scareman supplied us with directions to the bathrooms and a hot cup of Ramen noodles. The hot Ramen really hit the spot. We sorted through the rest of our (already wet) clothes, picking out the best combination of layers that would still keep us warm despite the damp. We logged in our notes so far and recorded a quick video for Scareman. Both were probably pretty incoherent. Now we had nothing left to do but sail on.
We left the CP about an hour after arriving. Jack sailed us out the creek while I dozed off for about a half hour until the next navigational decision needed to be made. After consulting my phone, we decided to take the shortcut route north of Harker's Island. The winds were still blowing from the NW which put us on a nice reach all the way to the Harker's Island bridge. We hailed the bridge and asked them to open up for us. After confirming we were too tall to clear the closed bridge, we got the OK. We kept sailing straight towards the bridge, waiting for the gates to come down on the causeway and the bridge to start swinging. The operator's timing was perfect; we sailed through on the left side as the bridge swung away from us. We cleared the bridge without problem and continued sailing east towards Core Sound.

Tired and Wet

As we cleared the bridge about 8AM we saw a catamaran ahead of us. It was Teak and Kokopedal. We caught up to them on our reach since we had not yet reefed our sails. We sailed abreast of them out in to the sound, until we paused to reef in the sail to about 50% of full working area.  Our goal after the wet ride on Friday was to stay dry in the boat (no hiking out) even if it limited our speed. About this time I got a text message from Dan, who was watching the SPOT feed: "Go go you almost caught Teak!" It was neat to know that people were watching the race from home.

Jack, bundled up.

Core Sound was rough. The winds put us on what would be a long beam reach but the waves were choppy and confused (not coming from the direction of the wind). Every time a bigger wave would hit the boat (every 15s or so) we would lose momentum and slow down before speeding back up again. Nevertheless we made OK progress up the sound. We had been warned about nets and there were shoals marked on the map, so we were cautious about getting too far out of the channel. We briefly tried to tack upwind but found it impossible to make progress against the combined wind and waves, so we maintained course.
As we were settling in for the long haul we suddenly saw the mast of the Teak E Torch go down. From our perspective, it looked like they had capsized, but as we got closer we saw them derigging the mast. It turned out they had lost a shroud line. Good thing they had a great pedal drive system to give them enough power to get back into shore and repair. Once we knew they would be OK we sailed on. After a while the waves died down a little and we were able to fully deploy the sail. We started making much better speed. The only thing that gave us trouble was trying to estimate our progress towards the next turn without sitting and staring at the GPS (we still needed to save battery). You could sum this up with the phrase 'objects in distance are further than they appear'. Fortunately this gave us a long time to update our route plan based on the wind conditions.

Good sailing - before the clouds!

We decided to take another shortcut through Cedar Bay and out through the slew. We had heard at the captains meeting that this gap was passable but at low tides might require you to jump out and push the boat along. We turned up into Cedar Bay and started tacking towards the exit, passing Jarhead and Michigama who were making impressive progress sailing and paddling upwind. Here we encountered the strangest wind conditions of the course. The wind seemed strong, but a steady stream of low puffy cumulus clouds were passing overhead from the NW. Every time a cloud passed overhead, the wind would stop entirely or change apparent direction. The air was likely getting sucked up into the clouds (cumulus clouds are formed by thermals) meaning the air was moving vertically instead of horizontally. Either way, it made sailing a pain since we would hit a lull every thirty seconds or so. When we had wind, we would make good speed and I would hike out if possible, but I ended up having to come back in every time we hit a lull. After a great deal of cursing and 'paddle sailing' we finally got set up for one final tack out the slew. It was shallow for the last half mile or so towards the exit. We raised the leeboard and rudder halfway. Eventually we could see the waves breaking at the inlet but couldn't tell how deep it would be. We aimed for a PVC pipe marker and hoped for the best. In the end, we sailed right through without problems. Conditions on the outside were about the same except we now had big rolling waves (but no breakers). The gusty wind conditions continued on the ocean side, and we had to try a few different tacks until we finally just paddled hard all the way to the beach. We dragged the boat up out of the water and collapsed onto the sand. We made it in 1 day, 8 hours, and 50 minutes.

Jarhead and Michigama spotted ahead! Also, wind-stealing clouds.

We. Finally. Made. It. 

Somewhere along Core Sound at about 10:30 AM, our SPOT stopped tracking. The OK messages we sent at the last two turns never went through. Whether it was operator error, bad line of sight (clouds?) or something else, we don't know. Fortunately we made it to the beach and didn't need to use the SPOT's SOS feature.