HOW TO DO IT on a Trawler....
we have found all the boats there are probably going to be hundreds of boats here all of them other boaters who have been voting for years actually said they've never seen it be that windy for that long anchoring can be a stressful time for a lot of boaters and over the past year we've developed a procedure that seems to work well for us so we'll share it here so my dad and dave are heading out to go hike i don't know why oh my god it says it's an art trail we have some little artwork already over here stop it that's hilarious that's amazing well we're headed over to the windward side of the island i'm uh curious to know what this is gonna feel like and look like i already hear the ocean welcome aboard encore we are off on a wild adventure to see and explore together one anchorage dive and hike at a time with the goal of living each and every day to its fullest i'm natalie that's tj our pup camo and my dad and captain mike we spent last season on the east coast and now it's time to head south make sure to join us as we cruise through the caribbean on an adventure of a lifetime we are pulling into georgetown over here at stocking island and we have found all the boats there are probably going to be hundreds of boats here all of them well here we are in georgetown hunkered down for the big storm for the next five or six days it's supposed to be a consistent 25 to 30 knot wind gust and here's our anchor circle boundary and it looks like we're beginning to drag already and it's day one so this should be interesting to see where we end up on day five hopefully we stay in here hopefully we don't end up over here look how much food he has it's not that much food that is a lot of breakfast tj you can't even burn calories we're just gonna be sitting on the boat for days you do not need to eat this much food cora is always stabilizing yourself all day long oh my gosh yeah it's a good thing to buy a grocery store that is it worked out this morning you did nothing else to do but eat well the people next to us are trying to win sir it's a great week for that and we just found out that it's going to blow like this for the next 10 days at least and it could go beyond that today is what is today tuesday today is tuesday we just checked the weather forecast and it shows all the way until next thursday essentially being this windy yahoo there's like two days it goes down to 12 knots right now it's blowing at about 28 and it calms down for like an hour or so and it stays basically about this for the next 10 days so it's a good time to hang out in georgetown and get some videos done you can get windsurf and had a wind surfer this would be ideal i know we just gotta go over there we shoot tj you could go over to their vote and ask to win windsurf i could the girls would love if you went over there and windsurf with them oh please timothy show me how to win today we have our friend dave coming over took his dinghy over today through all the wild chop and we are going to go over some route so we had another boat last night come over and show us a bunch of routes over in um in places to go in the ragged islands and jumento so we're going to sit down with him and show him our our routes and see if he wants to join us some places so that's what i said if you rent a car there you can go north to the north side um that is uh there's some kind of monument up there a christopher columbus monument i think yeah where christopher columbus supposedly landed gotcha so you can go up there with the car and then you also go down to the southern end like clarence town and the dean's group hole and do all that on the southern side if they said that oh there's a columbus monument there oh yeah i think they have about six of those over there sam salvador as well yeah something like they're kind of saying just easier it's too hard to get the boat down to parents town so you're better off just getting a car and driving down there it goes right here so you go here over to comer east and then you go through comer channel and then you drag it this direction over here and then you go down this southwest leg oh that's right down to here so my dad and dave are heading out to go hike i don't know why oh my god oh my god they're lunatics i think i'm good on that i think i'm just going to stay here it's starting to rain right now also so uh we're going to stay here where it's dry and a little bit less windy and get some episodes done and some boat work done and all that fun stuff because i mean that does not look enjoyable they're going for a hike but they're going to get soaking wet getting there from the waves and now it's like raining anyway so it's going to be we just checked the weather it's currently tuesday right now and it's going to be like this for the foreseeable future which is up until next thursday so like nine ten days from now it's all just the same it's like 17 to 35 knot winds just non-stop and there were some other boaters we were hanging out with who've been down here for a few seasons and they said that they have never seen a storm come through that's this long usually it's like two three days it flows kind of hard then it gets better this is it's already been like this for the last three days this is almost two weeks straight of just incessant winds so we're glad we're in georgetown because it's really protected inside of here from basically all directions it's a big area there's a lot of beaches a lot of things to do people to hang out with so it's a good place to pass a two-week storm but two-week storm that's nuts it's definitely going to mean that we have to make a few other stops shorter in the next few weeks but we're here for now it works our anchor is holding and here we be we have some big waves and some big boat neighbors another nordhaven over there there's actually two nordhavens bookend and dagny are anchored over there with us and a lot of sailboats nope too windy do you need to go potty i'll go out there with you i'll go with you oh you're matt let me fix your maps okay there you go go ahead go potty watch this yeah okay let's go inside it's not it's now it is okay so we're going outside to go um secure the chafe guard on the bridle because yes we're gonna fix the chief card yes because the one we have we have one really long one that's great and then the other one we had has two short ones on there and it keeps sliding down so we're gonna go tape it into place and hopefully that holds it better it's very windy no 30. so uh so so this is another day of complete wind here's our circle and we're just spinning back and forth and back and forth luckily we haven't dragged we haven't dragged we're doing good the wind is a consistent we'll call it 30. oh that's a big one oh yeah but what's really crazy is it looks like this boat is underway because there's so much swing and we're all moving so quickly that it actually looks like they're moving looks like we're moving too but back and forth 36.7s are maxed still
so it is day five or six of wind here in georgetown and so we're just doing a bunch of boat drawers today we put some new hinges on the dinghy that uh that broke tj's cleaning the woodwork made a nice breakfast clean the sea strainers and now i am doing some route planning uh we need to figure out if we have enough fuel to get us through back to the dry tortugas so we're i am putting in all the routes that we think we're gonna go on we're looking at going over to long island the crooked islands acklins my iguana conception the raggeds jumentos a bunch of those places so we just want to make sure we have enough fuel and enough fuel in our reserves because a lot of these places are like middle of nowhere there's no one else out there might not see another boat for days or possibly weeks it's possible so you have to be very very self-sufficient which is nice on a nordhaven because we have you know there's four fuel tanks you can isolate them we have a water maker we have multiple refrigerators and freezers we can be very very self-sufficient which is nice so i'm just putting all my routes together to see our total run times and distances so we can then calculate how much fuel we're going to burn including fuel for the generator to run everything else to then see if we are good or if we need to fill up somewhere along the way so that is today's windy day inside project so this is what route planning looks like currently this is our chart i believe i'm on a raster chart right now all these yellow dots are dots that we've put on here here is where we are currently in georgetown you can see all the tracks we've been making over here at our anchorage as we've spun around in circles for days and we are heading south and east i guess um so we're gonna head down here to thompson bay in long island up here to constellation i think it is then our plans to go up to conception island down to clarence town and then over to the crooked islands is where i'm at right now looking at potentially going to my iguana they just have this like beautiful anchorage over here in abrams bay that looks just so lovely i really want to go there because i was looking at heading over to these planet planet keys and there's like nowhere to anchor that's protected the anchorage is here very little info doesn't like usually when you zoom in it shows you more detailed information which it's not doing which means that's all the information i have on this chart and i believe we're on a raster chart i can check that in a second um so that's the possible anchorage so i'm thinking that well maybe we'll go to my iguana instead and since i'm doing this for fuel burn if we change our mind and go to planner planner planner however you say it will actually use less fuel so i figured i'd do that one now i'm going to do one from my iguana over to the acklins and to do that on our charts you zoom in i right click i'll do it out here right click new route and i zoom out to where i want to go and i think i have to go all the way around to get into an anchorage on the other side so when you're going in the bahamas especially in other places that have less charts you want to stay on the purple lines as much as possible those are the designated like boating routes and those have the most accurate up-to-date information on actual depths being correct i mean it's fine when you're out here that's in meters that's like that's so deep so you're going to be good to go you don't actually go on that chart i'll probably move that line but when you get into a shallower area like up in here you really want to stay on your on your lines is this where i'm going this looks so shallow i don't why do we have an anchorage sign in here oh i think i need to go up here to get into there that's debatable yep no we're not going to go through that that's too shallow okay so i'm not going to go in that little shallow area i'll move this point later we'll go up here to another anchorage we have marked down we actually heard that there are flamingos over here so that's really darn exciting right click and route i'm gonna name my route where is that from my iguana my iguana two i think it's flamingo flamingo key next that will be 14 hours that is long okay maybe we'll find another anchorage before then but that's 14 hours see right there 14 hours and 22 minutes and right now i'm not worried about the trip start time i'm just looking for general information and then i hover over it and it tells me that it is 107 nautical miles so that is how we go about planning our routes and figuring out we have enough fuel where we want to go and just our general day-to-day don't just go in into google maps and say i want to go here we uh you have to go into the charts and look at all the depths to make sure that you're going to be fine and i mean this is also going to be very dependent on whether routes could change or be delayed based upon whether um if it's coming if the wind's blowing your waves are going from certain directions could need to reroute or skip different islands entirely if we just can't get there but that's a little bit how route planning looks so i'm going to get back to this i have a lot more to do and i want to be able to get some other stuff done today so i probably have another hour or so of route planning and then taking all of my pages of calculations and adding all all that together for hours and miles then calculating our heel burn math i can clean your bed splash there here's splash here splash here he comes another windy boat project stinky bed cleaning the stinky dog bed among all the other things got tons of boat projects done by the time we leave here we are going to be sit on boat projects for like a month yeah right no we will no no we'll be ready for more no i think we'll be good is it feeling clean yeah it's over my feet i haven't washed those in a long time stop it you ready for a clean bed oh yes are you helping it's gonna have like clean sheets nothing better than getting into a clean a clean bed as you can tell we just sit here and swing back and forth so if you don't like the view out of the window just wait a few minutes it will change so that's uh the nord habits have a lot of windage they call it because it's a lot of surface area for the wind to catch so we catch that wind and it causes us to move around quite a bit as opposed to let's say a sailboat which doesn't have nearly the same amount of of a windage there's little guys out there the wind doesn't catch them too much with their sails down so they say stay a little bit steadier where we tend to really rip around quite a lot so during our big wind fiasco for the last couple of days natalie has spent countless hours doing research and putting together routes so where are we going to be going in the future so we're going to make a few stops we need nine actually like 11 passage days to be out in the ocean because a lot of this next traveling is unprotected waterways but trying to figure that out which we don't know the weather so i'm just kind of putting together a rough itinerary of where we want to go and making sure we have enough time to see everything so kind of what i do which i've done for the whole east coast too is i put together like a a month or two and i'll start writing in our stops for like where we want to go make sure of enough time so i'm doing march and april right now and i know at the end of april we're going to start being heading over to the dry tortugas so i'm kind of backtracking from there and then making sure of enough time for the ragged islands and the gementos and long islands and all that but i think we're going to be good i think we're going to have a decent amount of time and hopefully have enough enough weather windows because what we've got how many months left before we're in the dry tortugas like a month and a half or two it's like a month and a half and a half a little longer about but yeah and a half so about a month and a half and about i don't say like nine stops but nine like areas we want to go to yeah so i think we're pretty good i'll have this whole thing tentatively probably figured out soon but if anyone's ever curious how we route plan this is what i do i take a piece of paper and i write out all the days of the months and i put in where we're going to be i went to daniel for two nights and we traveled on the the six and now we've been in georgetown we're going to be here until the 15th because the wind won't stop blowing and even that is going to be a kind of crappy weather day to travel but it doesn't stop for a while so we're going to head over to long island and be there for a little bit because that's protected from the east we'll be good there but this is this is encores route for that route planning but planning of where we're going to be and make sure we have time to get there well you do a great job of it thank you and then my dad got shelby this book which we've read a little bit but i need to look at some more the cruising guide to the southern bahamas so we're going to look in here my next task which you can help me with is figuring out anchorages and cool spots and which islands you want to go to and see if we want to like cross any islands off the list or where we really want to make sure we get to sounds good yeah so the sun is just setting it calmed down to like 20 or 25 knots today it's back up to 30 now you can see this is crazy to me all of those lights are all masts of boats mostly sailboats but there are there have to be hundreds of boats here and it really looks like we are about to get a big storm coming through about to get windy but i'll come around the corner and show you and it's raining so we have the hatch is closed doors are closed and we are waiting for a big storm because that looks pretty eminent i need my shirt go ahead i would love more out than that yeah i will let some more chain out than that for sure it is finally calming down enough for a beach day today so we have the tender launched today's getting anchored over there and we're gonna go look for some hiking trails to go on apparently there's some trails that go all around the island so we're gonna go and try to find those and go for a few hikes today but it is so nice to be back in the crystal blue water and finally be enjoying this camo has been on the boat we've all been in the boat for like three or four days straight now he was going crazy are you so happy to be off the boat yes so just got over from the beach we have found the trail it says it's an art trail we have some little artwork already over here this is hilarious it looks like sailors or cruisers who came here like made like arts and crafts wow oh yeah that's coconuts with faces on them coconuts stop it that's hilarious oh my gosh really see this one right here keep going that's pretty good actually wow oh look at this thing over here oh my gosh that's hilarious sliding backwards okay oh yeah little footprints a little rope on the other side wow never hiked on our trail before oh my gosh it's everywhere oh that's so good people are highly impressive that's amazing that's cool wow very interesting yeah well we're headed over to the windward side of the island i'm uh curious to know what this is gonna feel like and look like i already hear the ocean the ocean's been like just ripping for days now another bottle of alcohol no well there's a note in the bottle huh take a little note in the bottle yeah this is their family so foreign these are our caribbean trail markers here being karen's caribbean so oh boy oh boy so we are hiking we are trying to go see some but we're just going to see whatever and then we saw that there's supposed to be some caves and blowholes oh we didn't see any caves well they kind of did there's like kind of a cave in kind of a blowhole yeah so but now we are back on our nice little trail and we're just planning on doing this for a bunch of the day today might head over to chat and chill later a nice little beach bar so we're gonna get some conch salad or something but until then this is our plan we should do some trail cleaning over here tj we don't have any pruners though which we kind of need there's another one i think we're about to get rained on too and we have finished our hike i thought we might get rihanna but that big gray cloud luckily went right past us and didn't get any rain did you find a new place to hang out yeah it did quite literally yeah wow what do you have attached to up above on the boat deck yeah wow is it pretty nice not bad just got out of the shower i wasn't expecting to see you hang in there anchoring can be a stressful time for a lot of boaters and over the past year we've developed a procedure that seems to work well for us so we'll share it here before we come into an anchorage we can see where the other boats are provided they all have their ais on and not always do they so what we'll do is based on the water depth and this is the water depth in meters we will set a circle diameter again based on the depth of the water and the length of the boat we'll know how much chain we want to let out and we'll set a circle accordingly and we might put two or three into an anchorage in case there's a boat in our primary one we'll go to the second or the third one so what we've done here is you can see our route in we've come in we came into the center of the circle we dropped the anchor then we slowly backed up put it in reverse and what we do is set the anchor now we know it was going to blow for about a week here so we set it at 300 rpm we start out at 800 rpm and just slowly work up until the anchor is holding nicely at 1300 and we leave it there for about a minute or two or three depending and then once we're confident we aren't moving back we take the boat out of reverse come forward put the bridle on and then take the uh slack off the tension off the chain and so here the wind blew almost 360 over the past week and quite often the wind does that it clocks around as they say so when we first came in dropped the anchor brought back set the uh anchor here and then the wind blew us around a bit and as we got to about 180 you can see there's a gap here the anchor actually turned and reset so once it reset it pulled back a few feet reset and then we've been in this quadrant ever since and when a boat comes into our circle the alarm will go off and if we drop out of the circle and another alarm will go off so by using the electronics we can get a pretty good feel on how we're doing how other boats are doing and uh this boat here probably isn't drifting off their their anchor but they we're all pulling in the same direction so it's fine anyway hopefully this is helpful for those of you that uh wonder how anchoring is done or if you're having trouble deciding in an anchorage where to drop the anchor this is a nice helpful tool for us anyway hopefully it works for you we're coming back from the grocery store natalie spotted some eagle rays i don't think that's a rock shark that is that's really cool eagle race i'm on our way for our grocery run yeah that's amazing foreign done this summed up our big wind fiasco storm we went all the way around almost to the full 360. we didn't quite do the full 360 but over the duration of the 10 days that it was super windy that is every direction that our bow faced kind of crazy well that's a new one what how he's laying i you know why are you stretching why are you laying like this is that comfortable you are a strange little boy sometimes it's okay you can later if you want though are you stuck no you're okay love you we love you so we're underway today we are we are leaving georgetown we've left georgetown down in the bahamas and we're headed to long island we're gonna go do some new exploring yeah we were at georgetown for it's been our longest and definitely been our longest job so far well you're there for 12 days well we were at chubb longer they're about the same about the same you know we were here for 14 it's not funny we were there for 12 days because the storm was going through it was like the never ending wind storm other boaters who have been voting for years i actually said they've never seen it be that windy for that long and it was very windy it was very windy we felt consistently for about 10 days almost like 30 knots just consistently blowing between 28 and like 35 knots just nonstop thanks so much for watching we hope you enjoyed learning more about the ins and outs of anchoring navigation planning and weathering a storm aboard encore join us next tuesday as we venture to one of the deepest blue holes in the world
2021-05-31 10:55
