Surrounded By Beauty

At Sea
39 07.33 N 074 31.68 W

The promised weather didn't arrive. Surprise! Instead of 24 hours of good breeze, we have had mostly light and variable. We progressed only 5 out of the past 24 hours under sail, the rest of the time we had to motor. Worse, the forecast for the next couple of days is for more of the same. Sailors, of course, hate motoring and love sailing. Too bad. Right now we're going to head in to Cape May NY for a refueling stop.

All that is not to say that we're having a bad time. On the contrary. It is beautiful out here. The sea is beautiful, the night sky was expecially beautiful last night. I re acquainted myself with Orion, The Pleadies, and The Milky Way, none of which I've had good views of for a while. Just before dawn, most stars were invisible. However, Venus stood out brightly. Right next to it was a single bright star. I used the Stellarium program to identify the star as Regulus.

Even Atlantic City managed to be beautiful. At night it is lit up like the Las Vegas strip, which it hopes to imitage. We could see it plainly from more than 20 miles away. Our closest approach to AC came just at dawn and as the sun rose above the horizon the glass windows of those high rise buildings gleamed like diamonds. One of the buildings has gold colored class, and the whole think looked like a polished bar of gold in the day's first direct sunlight.

It has been a pleasure having Miles on board. Miles is a very experienced sailor and he's pleasant to talk to. We're lucky to have him. Because Miles shares the watches, both Libby and I were able to get full night's sleeps, so we feel better.

I was on watch around 5AM. I found myself boxed between two tugboats pushing barges, and two fishing boats trawling. They came at me from all four corners. There was no way for me to turn to escape. I had to just sit there and trust that none of them would run us down; which is exactly what happened. The closest approach of any of them was about 1 mile. You may think that's a lot, but I sure don't. Anyhow, the point is patience and trust. That's what is needed sometimes and what is so hard to do.