To Block Island

At Sea
N 41 13 W 71 26

We are sailing for Block Island tonight in the company of Aruba II and her skipper Andre. In the morning we'll decide on our next passage. Perhaps we'll head for Cape May or Norfolk, or perhaps we'll head for Long Island Sound and NYC.

I notice that my energy for doing work and projects on the boat has been flagging recently. I have a number of things that have needed attention for a while, but I just didn't find the right moment to get up and actually do them. Is this a new phase of degeneration from a land-lubber to a seasoned cruiser? Is is just temporary and I'll snap out of it? I can't be certain of either. Perhaps what I need is for Libby to nag me more. That sounds like a dangerous thing to say because Libby reads
this blog too, but she only reads it every other month or so. Therefore any threat to my lethargy is postponed by at least a month.

Andre and I had fun today photographing each other's boats. Despite all the pictures that we take, the rarest of all are pictures of our own boats under sail. The reason why is obvious. There is a commercial firm that sends a helicopter out making aerial photographs of all boats in the area. Then they look up your boat name in the Coast Guard Registry, get your email address from that, and send an email solicitation. The email directs you to boatpix.com. I did that, but when I got there I
found that they wanted me to pay $250 up front for pictures without me even seeing a proof copy first. I'm reluctant to do that. Boatpix.com photographed Tarwathie once in Melbourne, Florida and again near Cape May, New Jersey.

When, as today, we sail alongside a friend, we can photograph each other and then swap the pictures. Andre has a film camera, not digital. Therefore, we passed our camera over to him, he made some shots and passed it back to us. Isn't that very risky? Yes and no. Our camera is waterproof, although not buoyant. I tied the wrist strap of the camera to the painter of a fender, then I passed the fender and camera together over to Andre on the end of a boat hook. That kept the boats far enough
apart to not bump. It also gave insurance in case I dropped. The fender will float and is easy enough to find in the water.