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lex Sell and Jessica McNutt were on break from their physics studies at Penn State and wanted to sail from Beaufort to Ocracoke to celebrate the New Year.

It would be a familiar trip. They’d sailed there last year on their San Juan 21 and had a great sail. This time, they would take a bigger boat, as a friend had loaned them his Hunter 37, “Stella et Vella”, which means Star and Sail.

On this voyage, the two – star and sail – did not align well.

The crew of the Stella et Vella, Jessica McNutt and Alex Sell.

Jessica and Alex sailed the Hunter to Ocracoke just fine and celebrated New Years Day there. Then, on Saturday morning, January 2, they took off toward Oriental, a run they thought they could make in one day.

They might’ve accomplished that if the winds hadn’t kicked up. Those gusts created up cold, wet waves just as the cold snap of 2010’s first week was getting started.

The going was wet and cold and then, not far in to their trip toward Oriental, the Hunter’s mainsail tore apart.

Ice on the lifelines of the “Stella et Vella”.

Graduate students in physics — Alex studies underwater sound transmission, Jessica concentrates on the teaching of physics — they seemed to take it in stride. As Alex notes, the winds had been in the forecast and they knew to expect them.

“What we weren’t expecting,” says Alex, “was the main to rip.”

With the mainsail down, their progress toward Oriental slowed to a crawl of about 2 knots. Saturday’s sunset came. It went. Darkness fell.

They dropped anchor for Saturday night in the Pamlico Sound, a few miles from the Neuse River Junction marker.

Temps were dropping. Lighting the heater wasn’t an option because of the back-draft from the wind, but blankets helped fend off the cold. So did the acclimatizing effects of a few years at school in central Pennsylvania, where temperatures drop to levels far below those on the Sound.

But in Pennsylvania, the room tends to stay still, whereas their boat was getting bounced and jostled around. Their sleep was further interrupted in the early hours of the morning by the groaning of the anchor roller.

Alex and Jessica say they knew there were problems with the roller and that it had been held together loosely. With the strain of the anchor pulling it, the roller was coming apart, which in turn chafed the anchor line.

Hanking on made more difficult by the formation of ice on the foresail..

There’s a certain sound and sensation when a boat breaks free of its anchor, and Alex says he heard the “Stella et Vella” cut loose. The boat drifted until sunrise, when the crew sailed her toward Oriental.

Sunday’s leg of the trip took on another challenging dimension. Overnight, the wave and wind and water action combined with the sub-freezing temps to put an inch or two of ice on the deck. Ice also covered the lifelines, which looked wrapped in freeze-frames of water. The foresail and its boom were similarly encrusted. As Jessica and Alex sailed on Sunday, in temperatures that were decidedly colder, the ice did not thaw.

Stella et Vella at the Town Dock.

The “Stella et Vella” (Star and Sail) arrived at Oriental’s Town Dock on Sunday, aglisten in ice that would be gorgeous, save for its treacherous stepping. Some of the ice was still there on Monday.

Sunset on Monday, as ice continued to cling to the lifelines.

At the Bean on Monday, they seemed to take the cold and the ice, busted sail and lost anchor in stride. Alex, who grew up in Raleigh, learned to sail at Camp Sea Gull when he was 15 and came back for several summers to be a counselor and teach others.

A year or two ago, he taught Jessica, whom he’d met at Penn State. She noted that in sailing, there were things that one had to learn, that didn’t make sense at first glance — the benefits of heeling over for instance — but she absorbed it quickly. She was the one who suggested they sail their San Juan 21 last year on the trip to Ocracoke. Sitting at The Bean Monday morning, she called this year’s two day trip back from Ocracoke “a wonderful experience of learning.”

Jessica McNutt and Alex Sell.

On Monday, they had the borrowed boat’s mainsail fixed at Banks Sails and bought a replacement anchor at the Marine Consignment of Oriental.

The two hope to trailer their San Juan 21 to the area and sail during a March break from school.

The weather would likely be less icy then.

Posted Sunday January 10, 2010 by Melinda Penkava

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