B.E.E.R. Cruise 2011 – Day 2-4

June 4, 2011…

Morning Temp: 79.6, Humidity: 84%, Relative Pressure: 30.07inHg

We waited for a few fellow BEER Cruisers to head out before following along. Today’s destination was the Navarre Pavilions.

We took the opportunity to depart from the dock with “The Force” in tow; others were towing dinks as well.

Beautiful day!

Carol relaxing for the weekend.

It is the BEER Cruise!

This guy appeared to be aground. There is a shoal area in the bay that typical recreational boats will never hit, but when a loaded barge doesn’t stick in the channel, they can find themselves in trouble.

There’s the gang.

Blake chilling.

Times Arrgh Changin.

Scot from s/v Clara came over for steak dinner and wine.

Nice sunset.

We were anchored in a protected area. The wind was coming from the West at 25 knots, but didn’t bother us at this point.

The gorgeous evening quickly ended. Here you can see the storm clouds coming in from the East. The pics end for this day. It became a very rough evening into dark. The highest wind speed recorded on Monomoy was 65 knots. Everyone made it OK with a few dinks that came loose, but I think everyone recovered their belongings with help from other cruisers.

The next morning we were still tired, but it was another day. We sailed over to Quietwater, though ended up with around 20 boats for the night.

Once anchored at Quietwater, Ben and Pogo went for a sail.

We had a great night hanging out with lots of good people. The next morning their was smoke in the air from a distant brush fire, but all was well, except when Potofino 1′s skipper forgot how to idle down, which caused a huge wake shaking lots of boats and spilling soda all in our salon. Otherwise, it was a nice morning.

We headed out with the plan to sail to Redfish Point, but the wind was coming directly from the West making for lots of tacking.

The wind picked up to 25 knots, so with the seas building, we were going to fast for s/v The Force being towed and had to run the diesel at idle to keep around 2 knots.

Blake was pooped out.

As the wind picked up (it apparently peaked at 32 knots, but we were in by then) and lightning in the distance, we decided to change course and head back to the marina. We noticed other BEER Cruisers heading in as well, but I know many stayed out for the night. We ended up with another blow about 3am, which brought ~8 knot wind gusting to around 30 knots.

We had intended to remain out till Saturday heading all the way over to LuLus in Alabama with stops along the way. We are also very familiar with our afternoon thunderstorms, but what is different with our recent storms is they are hitting late at night, which makes them unpredictable.

Here is a screen shot from this morning where the wind prediction was 5mph, but in reality it was 9mph gusting to 32mph at ~3am.

Oh well, in the end we had a good time with lots of great people. We met new friends and got to see some old friends. One thing is for sure, we all survived and everyone gets an A+ on anchoring ability, since not a boat drug anchor.

Looking forward to the next BEER and hopefully nicer weather for all.