October 28th – Rockland to Perry’s Creek Vinalhaven, Riding out Sandy

The Cheryl Crow song “Leaving Los Vegas” played continually through my head on this final day of boatyard purgatory. We are outta here. Nothing can stop us. Not even approaching Super Storm Sandy.

“Uncle Phil”, continued working throughout on the various new systems he had installed in Redwings under intense pressure as the captain continued to look at his watch as the day wore on and Sandy approached. Colleen and the boys came down to say goodbye and hopefully I can find some pics.

The plan was to leave around noon to make Seal Bay on Vinalhaven to ride out the storm. We finally slipped the lines and took off at around 1500 (yeah that’s 3 in the afternoon) and Phil got a good pic of us leaving (not sure where the crew are in this picture!)

The autopilot is working well, the new gas system is installed, the davits are finished, but our fridge is dead and we need to get a new membrane for our new “used” watermaker. The plan is that after the storm, we will head South and meet Phil in Stratford CT as he needs to be there to work on another boat and he will bring the new fridge and membrane.

Once underway, it became obvious that we would not make Seal Bay be dark so targeted Perry’s Creek instead. Perry’s Creek is also on Vinalhaven and is a bit tighter in terms of finding anchoring space, but is also very well protected. We arrived around sundown and set the anchor in 15 feet of water with 100 feet of chain out and “double snubbers”.

An introduction to the crew for this first leg: Jaime O’jeda is a US/Spanish dual citizen who I met this summer when he chartered Redwings for two weeks. We had a great time sailing the coast of Maine together and Jaime is also a great boat cook so when he told me that I needed him to come on the trip I considered, and agreed! Jaime came from his home in Virgina 10 days before departure and helped me ready the boat and ALL of the provisioning (with help from Peter!)

Peter Duffy is a local lad (in his 60’s…) and being retired and up for adventure signed on to crew both legs of the delivery. Peter has some small boat experience and was in the Navy during Vietnam. If he can follow orders as he did in the Navy, he can learn the workings in Redwings in short order I am sure.

After pushing and rushing and pushing and rushing for days to get out of Rockland, we really needed the two days at Perry’s Creek hunkered down to relax, put the boat in order, go over the systems, and plan our escape. It was very lucky in hindsight that we were (constantly) delayed from departing as Sandy was fast approaching the Mid-Atlantic coast – right were we would have been if we had left a week ago…

The storm in the end did not make a direct hit on Maine, but we still saw gusts of up to 43 knots in Perry’s Creek. The boat and crew weathered the storm well with the only casualty a broken blade on our wind generator when I stupidly tried to stop it from spinning with a boathook…..