Last night there was much chatter between our anchorage mates, Jarrod and Sy as we discussed our plans for getting further South. As I mentioned before, Jarrod and Sy left Norton's 10 days ago and are getting a little stir crazy and anxious to make some tracks. Tom and I examined various weather sources every which way and really couldn't see a window to leave until Monday morning. Nevertheless, Sy announced his intention to leave for Atlantic City, NJ today. This is a 200 mile trip and would take about 30 hours, a lot of it some ways offshore. We really couldn't see how this would work given the forecast for westerly winds (again). But this morning both Sy and Jarrod hauled anchor and left. I immediately started second guessing our decision to wait and was worried we were missing something and were losing out on the opportunity to make some headway. After some consideration, Tom agreed with my suggestion that we leave as well, although I could tell it was against his better judgment. So after some hasty preps we hauled our anchor and headed out about an hour after those guys. It was a beautiful sunny day with a steady westerly wind blowing. The plan was to motorsail as close to the rhumbline to Atlantic City as possible. However, the winds got stronger and the forecast shift to the Northwest never happened and by 11.00am it was apparent to us that this was not going to work. So we reluctantly turned around and beat a retreat back to Block. Actually, we had a wonderful sail back into the harbor and were settled in time for lunch. We spent the rest of the day monitoring the weather and could see that things did not improve and if anything got worse. We were not surprised to see Sy pull back into the anchorage just before sunset. Unfortunately, he had some technical difficulties with his wind vane so he lost his self-steering. He said it had become very lumpy and uncomfortable out there. Apparently Jarrod decided to press on despite the unfavorable conditions but had changed course for Sandy Hook. As we listen to the wind howling tonight, we hope he is OK.

So, I have learned that we need to trust our own judgment and not get carried away by the plans of others. I have also learned to trust my Captain! Thankfully no harm was done, we enjoyed a lovely sail on a beautiful sunny day and the batteries got charged! Keep all fingers crossed for good winds tomorrow.