NYC Bound

At Sea
38 13.25 N 074 52.52 W

So far so good. We are about 40% of the way to NYC. Right now we're about 10 miles off shore from Ocean City Maryland.

Things started out brilliantly. Clear sunny skies, and a nice fresh breeze, and the tidal currents with us. We passed Portsmouth and Newark with no problems. The feared million person crowd wasn't there on Thursday because we passed in a lull between Wedneday and Friday events. We did get to see more warships than usual plus one of the tall ships (this one from Deleware).

Sailing out through the bridge tunnel, we were doing almost 7 knots. If that held up it would have been a very rapid passage indeed. Such was not to be. Around sunset a weak cold front approached bringing overcast skies and disturbing the wind. Still we managed to maintain 4-5 knots progress.

There was a spectacular lightning show over the Delmarva Penninsula. From our vantage point at sea we could see countless flashes of cloud to cloud and cloud to ground strikes. Most of them were too far away to hear the thunder. We hoped that all the storms would stay over land, but such was not to be.

Twice in the dead of night we sailed abruptly into one of those thunderstorms. It's hard on a night like that because we could neither see nor hear the storm approaching. We were forced to heave to and go below decks to sit out the storm, but not before our clothes got soaked. After those two storms passes, the sky cleared up, the wind resumed and we had a brillian moon-lit night.

Since dawn, the wind has almost completely died. We have been motor sailing all day long. The forecast promises a bit more wind tonight. I'll also head us in close to the New Jersey shore so that we might catch onshore-offshore winds.

One added benefit. There is an air show in Ocean City tomorrow, and we have been seeing some of the fighter planes practicing over the water. They are really fun to watch.