Last night brought extremely high wind gust - 40 mph. Most everyone who is staying on their boat was awake and out tending to rigging when the worst of it hit around 5 am. It was hard to sleep all night - noise mostly and then some boat movement. There was a cacophany of sounds from the rain hitting the various parts of the boat to whistling and clanging of lines and cleats and a general howling of wind. Keith was up in true form and out with the rest of the boys while I got up long enough to make him wear a life jacket and take out my iphone with the "white noise" app on and plug in my headphones.
The day was a downsized version of the night. We invited a couple from the boat beside us who had a particularly rough night, loosing a cleat and retying their boat all to a pounding Surprise has yet to see. It was a sweet time.
The evening turned lovely - calm and cool after lots of humidity of the last few days. We checked weather and there is a window starting tomorrow so we are going to jump through it and sail at dawn around NY harbor with it's spectacular views of the city and Statue of Liberty and straight out into the Atlantic to sail offshore down the Jersey coast to Cape May. We had thought to break it up and stop in Atlantic City but we have lost a lot of ground and would like to make some up. So it's a 27 or so hour trip. Just K and me so we'll be pulling some long shifts. I'm a little nervous of the currents around "Hells Gate" in the East River since we'll have to go through at the strongest times. There is a lot of commercial traffic so we will have to be on high alert. If things go well we will arrive in Cape May Sunday morning.

"You may not be able to control the winds but you can adjust your sails."