Ah In Our Natural Element

At Sea N31 33.89 W 080 54.96

(6/9/05) What a pleasure. We left the marina about 10:30 and we reached the end of the St. Mary’s river inlet around 12:30. We hoisted sails, stopped the motor, and reentered our natural element. We’ve been on starboard tack ever since. Tarwathie glides along at about 6 knots. I need to tweak the control line for the Monitor self-steering every couple or hours or so. Otherwise, she handles herself until we run into land. Sailing doesn’t get much better than this.

We could make a straight run to Charleston and the GPS says we’d get there around 15:30 tomorrow. I’m taking a more circuitous route and I’m not sure of the ETA. It’s 22:35 now. I’m alone in the cockpit blogging in the dark. It’s great. Haven’t seen any boats or lights since it got dark. It’s lonely out here.

If we had this weather in March, we would have been able to sail to the Chesapeake. 15 knots easterly wind, seas 2-3’. Most important, the winds don’t die at night. The forecast calls for 5 more days of the same weather. I reefed the main and the yankee jib before sunset. Its wasn’t necessary, but I think it’s good policy. It’s much easier to shorten sail in daylight, and the night watch won’t have to worry much about wind shifts.

We saw a sea turtle coming out. Libby saw something big and black that may have been a whale. I saw some luminous critter in the bow wave.

We could easily set course for Buford NC instead of Charleston. However, Al Hatch told us that the Charleston City Dock is one of the nicest places around to put up for a night or two. I want to try it.

I decided not to try the 4 hour watch cycle this time. I’ll take us from dusk to dawn and sleep in the morning.

As I write, the crescent moon is about to set. The sky is overcast, so there are no stars. It’ll be really dark out here then.