Hove To

At Sea
32 02.00 N 080 34.46 W
Th
We had a very nice day at sea. Warm,gentle and fast. So fast in fact that we got here too early.

Right now we are 3 mines from the entrance to Port Royal Sound, which leads to Beaufort, SC. However, we got here around 0400, just when the tide turned against us. Rather than fight the ebb tide, we elected to just wait out here until the flood tide begins around 1100.

We're hove to. Something we have little practice with. However, it's not much of a lesson because the wind and waves are almost nil. It hardly matters if the sails are up or not. That means, we won't get much practice at the art of heaving to.

3 miles away is that parking lot in the ocean where the ships anchor to wait for the Savannah River pilots. The first time we passed that years ago we were bewildered. We couldn't understand why all those ships were sitting still in one place. Sometimes there are 8-10 ships there, last night there were only four. It's kind of spooky. In any case, the AIS gave us welcome confirmation that those ships were indeed sitting still.

Yesterday afternoon we had a special treat. A pod of four frisky dolphins swam with us for nearly an hour. We had great fun watching them from the bow. Each of them had a bit of seaweed growing from the tip of their dorsal fins. It must br irritating and it must slow them down. We wished that we could jump in an help groom them.

Dolphins are amazing. They seem to glide through the water with hardly any perceptible motion. Of course they must flip their tails to make themselves go, but the motion is so slight that it's hard to see at all.