S/V NAVIGATOR, our Island Packet 40 will depart from Norfolk Virginia on May 29, 2025 after two preparation days and a one-day weather delay. The crew members are: Captain Frank Mummert of Maryland (Skipper), Captain David Gifford of Maryland (First Mate), and student crew members Anthony Frattalone (Minnesota), Charles Honke (Minnesota), Colm Prendergast (Massachusetts) and William Schrade (Virginia). NAVIGATOR will make the passage to Bermuda via a non-stop ocean route. The cruise has an estimated distance of 670 nautical miles, and will take approximately 6 days, sailing both day and night. We will discuss the route, weather and actual progress here on our blog as it happens, so please join us! To follow the discussion, see the COMMENTS to this blog post. To follow their actual progress on via SPOT, click HERE.
19 comments:
From: S/V Navigator
Subject: BERMUDA OUTBOUND DAY 1-2
Date: May 30, 2025 at 8:25:05 AM EDT
To: Tom Tursi, MD School
We got underway from Cobb’s Marina yesterday morning after taking on fuel and water and pumping out. We had an uneventful trip through the bridge-tunnel. Apparently, the Navy decided to stay home. We did have a pod of dolphins accompany us out to the ocean.
Once past the pilot area at the mouth of the Bay, we set the main sail and headed toward our waypoint off Cape Hatteras. We couldn’t set our headsail, since the wind was not quite perfectly on our nose and we wanted to get as far south as possible before entering the Gulf Stream.
As the sun headed for the western horizon, the weather turned rainy, although the fog and thunderstorms predicted did not materialize. In fact, the sea was pretty flat and the wind tended to stay below 10 knots. Because of this, we were able to have a hearty first night dinner in the cockpit, prepared by Charlie and Tony. David led Will through the intricacies of sea water in buckets dish cleaning, while Colm and Frank managed the boat.
Overnight, we ran through the fishing fleet out of Oregon Inlet, but by dawn, we were on our own little patch of ocean. The sky looks like it going to try to clear up and the crew are eager to try out their sextant skills.
We have set the Genoa now and will be angling more easterly to try to get some lift. We anticipate hitting the GS during the 08-12 or maybe early in the 12-16. We will head more easterly after that.
~ Captain Frank Mummert aboard S/V Navigator
From: Tom Tursi
Subject: Wx 5/30
Date: May 30, 2025 at 10:04:41 AM EDT
To: "S/V Navigator"
Cc: MD School
Hatteras Canyon to Cape Fear between 100 NM and 250 NM offshore-
420 AM EDT Fri May 30 2025
Similar forecast for Baltimore to Hatteras Canyon 100-250 miles offshore
.TODAY...SW winds 15 to 25 kt. Seas 4 to 8 ft. Scattered showers
and tstms.
.TONIGHT...SW winds 20 to 30 kt, increasing to 25 to 35 kt. Seas
7 to 12 ft. Scattered showers and tstms.
.SAT...W to SW winds 20 to 30 kt. Seas 7 to 12 ft. Scattered
showers and tstms.
.SAT NIGHT...W winds 20 to 30 kt. Seas 7 to 10 ft. Scattered
showers and tstms.
.SUN...W to SW winds 5 to 15 kt. Seas 5 to 8 ft.
.SUN NIGHT...SW winds less than 10 kt, becoming variable. Seas
4 to 7 ft.
No hurricanes at present.
Tom
From: S/V Navigator
Subject: BDA DAY 3
Date: May 31, 2025 at 8:23:16 AM EDT
To: Tom Tursi, MD School
Short entry. Solid winds from SW, good speed, but seas rough and weather squally overnight. Crew ok.
We sailed through a storm overnight that kept the crew up for over 7 hours. We even hove to for a few hours. This morning, thre crew is resting up and playing that fun sailor game, “when did I get that bruise!??!”
Have a safe trip. Sounds great fun.
From: Tom Tursi
Subject: Wx 5/31
Date: May 31, 2025 at 10:46:22 AM EDT
To: "S/V Navigator
Cc: MD School
Cold Front passing your position by Monday giving continued SW winds. Another Low forming over Hatteras Tuesday dragging a cold front and passing your position by Wednesday with winds below 20 knots. High settling in S of you by Thursday and producing N winds less than 20 knots and some areas below 10 knots.
Sail on!
Tom
Giving a shout out from a breezy Bermuda. Wind gusts are up to 31mph today!
All of us vicarious, blue water sailors are cheering you on. God speed...
Ditto!!!
From: S/V Navigator
Subject: BERMUDA DAY 4
Date: June 1, 2025 at 8:15:43 AM EDT
To: Tom Tursi, MDSchool
As I am writing this, we have just passed the halfway point of this leg of our run. This means that we are now well past the geographic midpoint of the trip and, we believe, we are past the time midpoint. Despite the rough weather for the past couple of days, we have made really good speed. This morning, we reset the headsail and, if the wind continues to drop, we may even shake the reef out of the mainsail.
The crew continues to be in good spirits. We enjoyed a hearty sausage and rice dinner last night and finished up with a dessert of Oreo cookies. This was the first crew dinner that everyone actually had a serving of!
We continue to have overcast skies, but our celestial navigators are getting the best shots they can and are doing well at their plotting. Today, we will attempt to get a morning and an afternoon sun shot and plot an actual running fix. Excitement is high.
We are still to far out to say for certain, but it looks like we will make it to Bermuda either Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning. Wish us luck!
~ Captain Frank Mummert aboard S/V Navigator
From: "Tom Tursi"
Subject: Wx 6/1
Date: June 1, 2025 at 10:46:34 AM EDT
To: "S/V Navigator"
Bravo Zulu to you for coming through a rough patch. But you are all still Polliwogs until you cross the equator under sail to become Shellbacks, then to round the Cape of Storms and future challenges...
There is a Low coming off Hatteras on Monday and passing probably N of you Tuesday and clearing to NE by Wednesday. Expect light winds from SW to S through Tueday. Bermuda High settling in by Wed producing generally light N-NE winds for you. No hurricanes in view.
I was ditto...
From: S/V Navigator
Subject: BERMUDA DAY 4
Date: June 2, 2025 at 8:45:30 AM EDT
To: Tom Tursi, MDSchool
Today started with a large pod of porpoises swimming by the boat, just after sunup. 15 or 20 of the small, dark gray bodies slid past us on their way to some important underwater meeting. As I have been told, any day with dolphin is a good day, and I choose to assume that the same holds true for porpoises.
Unfortunately, this is the only good thing that happened this morning. At about 2 AM, our faithful wind, which has been pushing us along for three days, departed us and we found ourselves sailing on the iron wind. The sea state got so flat that we had to drop the mainsail and secure it, because the gentle rolling of the boat slapped the sail back and forth with each cycle.
We are less than 175 miles to our Bermuda waypoint. I can now pretty confidently say that we will arrive there between noon and midnight tomorrow. This means we probably won’t get in until Wednesday morning, but we should be close enough to the island tomorrow evening for text messages and possibly email from the crew to you.
Speaking of getting close to Bermuda, we saw our first Bermudan long tails yesterday. They circled us at about 250 miles out. There are few things more majestic than a long tail in flight and we were happy for the good arrival omen they bring.
~ Captain Frank Mummert aboard S/V Navigator
Morning from Bermuda!! Sun is predicted for your Wednesday arrival. Velma
The beauty of sail...
From: S/V Navigator
Subject: BERMUDA DAY 5
Date: June 3, 2025 at 8:45:53 AM EDT
To: Tom Tursi, MDSchool
As you read this, we are less than 50 miles from Bermuda. We have had a very uneventful last 24 hours. Our wind has deserted us and we have been grinding along. We haven’t seen a white cap in over 12 hours. Of all of our weather services, Tom was the most accurate with his prediction.
We are all eagerly looking for the first sight of land. Everyone has their plans made and are ready to get on to shore and back home.
One of the things that our crew will remember is the excellent food this trip. Our mid-watch team of Tony and Charley have outdone themselves in preparing dinner each evening and this morning, they put the icing on the cake, so to speak, with a hot breakfast of scrambled eggs with meat and cheese, accompanied by hot, buttered toast. An excellent treat!
~ Captain Frank Mummert aboard S/V Navigator
From: Frank Mummert
Subject: BERMUDA DAY 6
Date: June 4, 2025 at 10:39:06 AM EDT
To: Tom Tursi, MDSchool
For those of you keeping track, I really have no idea what day of the trip this is. We have arrived in Bermuda, we are tied up and our fearless crew has departed, leaving the boat quiet, clean, and empty. David and I are busy getting showers, doing mounds of laundry and looking forward to going over to the White Horse Bar for lunch and a drink!
We spent most of yesterday motoring or motor-sailing with just the headsail deployed. The wind was just flukey enough that we didn't want to set the mainsail, especially since the wind was coming from behind us to our starboard quarter. By using just the headsail, we were able to set it when we had wind and douse it when it started to flog.
We finally saw the island of Bermuda at about 2:00, from about 20 miles off. At 3:00, those of us with "smart watches" suddenly found ourselves on Bermuda time, which was an hour later than our time zone. Now half the boat thought it was 3:00 and half thought it was 4:00. Most importantly, the Customs and Immigrations people ashore thought it was 4:00, which meant closing time.
Now, we had a choice. We could try to get into the anchorage area inside the island itself or we could sit offshore and wait for the morning. We took the more conservative decision and hove-to offshore. We set a waypoint on the GPS and when the boat had moved two miles from the waypoint, we started the engine and moved back. Of course, since we were still underway, we kept a crew up through the night, monitoring the situation.
In the morning, we got the boat ready to enter Bermuda, but discovered that, during the night, two huge cruise ships had showed up and were doing the same thing we were (the C&I people may come to their ships, but they don't come any earlier than 8:00!). So, we slowly headed toward the entrance while Bermuda Radio asked us to stand by while the cruise ships went in ahead of us. Darn tourists!
When we got close to the Cut - the actual enterance to the St. George's area where we dock - Bermuda Radio came back on and told us that the Customs and Immigrations dock was "heavily damaged" and that we needed to land at Penno's Wharf East and walk over to the C&I office. We agreed - and then pulled out the charts to try to figure out where Penno's Wharf East was! It turns out that it is better known as the Ferry Terminal. On either side of the main dock is a little wharf, capable of taking one or maybe two boats. Luckily for us, there was no one there, so we were able to land, walk over, get checked in and then go over to the Bermuda Yacht Services office, where we could get information about what our options were.
After a little bit of sweet-talking and begging (not shameless begging, mind you - just regular begging), we were able to get slotted into a spot over at the main marina facility, which gave us access to showers, laundry and air conditioning. Heavan!
So, we moved the boat, the students packed their gear and we said goodbye, wrapping up another successful Bermuda run.
We have some reprovisioning and minor repairs and maintenance, but we will be ready for the next crew, when they show up Friday afternoon.
Now, if we could just remember what today is....
As always, a fine tale from Capt. Mummert. Happy.to.hear all safely arrived.
We really enjoyed reading all the updates and keeping up with our peeps! Made us feel part of the adventure! Thanks
Another successful sail. Love following all the adventures. Since moving to Tallahassee for retirement I have not been sailing until recently. Unfortunately, I have run into another snag, slipped off a step ladder and feel against to piece of exercise equipment and fractured a couple of ribs. Best to MD School and the new crew on the return trip.
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