Hey sailors… So its November 27th and we have been in Moorehead city North Carolina for about a week now. Tomorrow we leave to head back out in to the open ocean and make a second attempt at getting around cape fear.
We finished our longest passage yet last week (220nm) from Norfolk Virginia to here near Beaufort North Carolina about a week ago. I think it was last Tuesday we tried to leave here in a weather window and head out around cape fear and failed. The forecasts were very wrong and the winds were supposed to be 15 knots gusting to 20 knots at a 60 degree wind angle off the bow. What we really got was 20 knots of wind steady on the nose (coming from Cape fear not shore) and building waves rising up to 6 footers pounding us on the nose. We were about 24 miles offshore in steady 27 knots by mid afternoon and the winds did not die down or shift to be more north westy as the forecast said… it went more south’ish. We made our tac and realized we were not getting tight enough upwind to make much progress. After the tac if we continued for the rest of the day we would only make 10 miles of upwind progress in 10 hours of hard sailing. We failed and had to return here to moorehead city to anchor again in defeat.
So after that failure last week I’m nervous about trying this again tomorrow. BUT…. the good news is we found a crew mate to help with this passage! YAY!!!!… We met a fabulous local guy here named Ethan who is looking for more offshore sailing experience and has time to come help us with this next leg. God does answer prayers huh.
We have narrowed this leg down as short as we can this time. Instead of trying to get 175 miles to Georgetown South Carolina we will only jump about 120 miles to get into the cape fear river. We have local knowledge affirming it will be deep enough and warnings the tidal
current can run 4.5 knots so we will have to time our entry carefully.
So here is the part scaring me…. Lets look at the wind forecast maps for the next few days. The weather in the north Atlantic has been unbelievably bad this year. Like breaking 100 year records kind of bad. Perfect storm kind of bad.
I kind of put these images to the right in chronological order for you. You might not be used to looking at these windy maps but basically know that green is good, yellow is the edge of too much, purple is bad and blue is terrifying and white is “you are going to die”.
Look at this one on the right… see that white spot that is 88 knots of wind… that is like 150kmh winds pushing fearsome 30 foot waves up 8 seconds apart. This is weather normally seen at the poles not this far south. Also notice that the
nasty purple circles near England is actually made up of 4 fronts that have rocketed out of here in the last 2 weeks one after another and starting grouping together out there in the north Atlantic ocean.
Now notice the purple swirl that will form on land behind us (west) tonight and join its friends out in the Atlantic. We want to leave on the back side of this one and before the next one comes thru on Monday.
What i’m worried about is both it size and speed. This one will join the one above us near the maritimes of Canada to form one giant nasty windy front the size of the west half of the Atlantic ocean. Well the east side of the Atlantic ocean is still 
occupied by the last mega cell. The two will collide and I’m worried the western one we want to sneak behind might not clear the coast as predicted and we might get caught in it.
In the last image that is the cell location on Friday nicely offshore from us but the local winds for our passage leg will be none at all and if anything come out of the south. Not so good for a sailboat. So we have to ride the north west winds on the back of the cell tomorrow.
The scary part is that all forecasts are 50% wrong… but what part will be wrong? If the winds go exactly as forecast we will have a lovely 30 hour 120 mile passage out the 24 miles offshore around cape fear and get safely back in before the next nasty cell comes. BUT…. with such severe winds so close by… if the part of the forecast that is wrong is WHEN the front moves offshore… IF it collides with the giant front near England and stalls… holds still over us… We will actually be in danger.
Lexi is still quite nervous about this passage. Me scared.
Lets pray this goes according to plan. There is no safe harbor for us in between these 2 points.