I sailed last night (I'm motoring today). I need to go slow this trip, slower than before. The Jacksonville run is the shortest of the three legs (210 miles). So I started out with the genoa rolled up a bit. I suppose I could leave at dawn on this leg and then be free to use all the speed I could get and shorten the trip by 8 hours. But we just weren't ready psychologically or physically, and we had some jobs to do to get ready. The weather wasn't ready either, which is the biggest gating factor.

A few dolphins came over to check out my boat this morning.

There was a wild nor'easter in the northeast this weekend - the type of weather I was so paranoid about and so desperate to avoid. Just before it arrived, Roger and Tari stopped at Point Lookout Marina to say goodbye to Keith and Lyn. Then the storm hit and literally slammed them both. The docks are at a fixed height and the storm surge brought the water over the top of the docks. Not good if you are trying to put fenders down to keep your boat off the dock. So the boats were tied off with extra lines and there was very little sleeping going on that night. As I write this, I'€™m over 40 miles offshore, so I can't look at their Facebook pages and get the exact details. Due to the curvature of the land, each leg takes me that far offshore.

I'm dealing with a lovely toothache. Super sensitive to temperature. While transferring fuel from a jug to the tank, there was a mild BANG! The port side lower back shroud let loose. The threaded part of the stay was bent, indicating it was now defective - not sure why Larsen wouldn'€™t replace it when I asked. Now it has clean snapped in two. There was enough thread left to put it back together. It broke while motoring in no wind. When I measure how loaded it is, the needle maybe comes off zero.

Riddle me this. Suddenly the time on my older hand held GPS device does not match the time on my iDevices. The GPS says 7, but the others say 8, and all claim to be on Eastern Time. Answer in tomorrow’s blog.