Rhythm

At Sea
N 33 29 W 77 39

Well we got into a good rhythm at sea. We're settled into pretty much four hour shifts, changing at the classical times, 12:00, 4:00, 8:00. The only exception is on the graveyard. Then I take midnight to 05:00 giving Libby and extra hour of sleep. It makes a big difference for her.

Our progress for the 2nd 24 hours at sea was 118 nm, beating our exactlhy nominal 100 nm from the day before. What's more, yesterday I said that if we could make 120 nm in thee next 245 hours we could pass frying pan shoals buoy at sunset. That prediction appears to be exactly right. We had good winds and Gulf Stream push last night for about 9 hours and we made about 60 nm in that window.

This morning the winds died a lot and we had to depart the Gulf Stream to head in, so progress was a lot slower.

Worse of all, 15 minutes ago, at 19:00 I threw in the towel and started the engine. The winds had died to less than 5 knots and the forecast called for 5 knots and variable for tonight, so we would not have gotten far by tomorrow. Another motivation, the forecast calls for three days of rain and variable winds starting tomorrow afternoon. I'd just as soon be on the inside for that. I considered turning left to motor in to Cape Fear tonight and then motoring up on the inside the next two days,
but no. Why take 3 days to accomplish what you can do in one day?

Ironically, just as I'm writing about finding rhythm, running on motor power broke it. The seas aren't big but they are rolling us around a lot. That always makes Libby a little queasy. Oh well.

Perhaps this spot is a jinx for us. Blog fans may remember a blog article from 2005 entitled "Hammered" where I described our worst day at sea ever. Well the hammering started just about here, the place where we were when I just started the engine.

Actually, our record is two for four in passing Frying Pan Shoals. The very first time was when we sailed from Charleston to Norfolk around Hatteras. That trip was fast and very pleasant. The second time we got hammered. The third time, last spring, we passed through the buoy marked short cut through the middle of Frying Pan Shoals without incident. This is the fourth time, and the wind died just as we got here.

I hailed three more vessels today on VHF, using both the hand held and the fixed radios, and got no response. Can it be that I need a new radio with DSC (Digital Selective Calling) to ring their bell and that they don't just monitor channel 16 any longer? That sounds crazy, but so do all the other theories I have. To be sure, when we get to Beaufort I'll do radio checks with both radios.

The sky has been especially clear and cloudless today. It must have been a maximum UV exposure day. However, 15 minutes before sundown, the sun disappeared behind a very opaque could in the west. I figure it must be smoke from that fire in Georgia. Wow! That fire is 300 miles behind us. I did not expect smoke this far away.

p.s. Trivia department: I learned from my son David that hedgehogs run around in the Kuwaiti desert at night. I would have never guessed that. I wonder what else they have for flora and fauna? At a minumum, there must be hedgehog food.