Well, I'm back and it was a heck of a trip. One crew member hurt his back and had to cancel out at the last minute. I was able to find a replacement in quick fashion at the yacht club and was off on schedule.

The owners spent about a half a day going over the operations of the boat with me after we completed the sale. That was a great turn over and after buying the provisions, I felt we were ready to shove off the next day.

Friday, Don and I did a few more small projects we saw that needed to be done before leaving while we waited for my nephew to fly in from Milwaukee. Rick arrived around noon and I picked him up, dropped the rental car off and we were quickly underway for Block Island.

It was about a 5 hour trip there and while heading south in the Narraganset bay we were in the midst of sailboat racing near Newport, RI. We watched 3 of the old 12 meter sailboats battle it out while tacking upwind in brisk conditions. I slowed the boat down to watch them race and not interfere with them as they were all neck and neck constantly passing each other on the tacks and we were right in the middle of it all.

Latter on, we continued our journey to BI and cleared the harbor and were into the ocean with a gentle swell and light winds. 5 hours later we pulled into BI and searched for a mooring but all were taken so we wound up finding a spot to drop the hook. Victory drinks were broken out and the celebration began as the first day of our journey was a great success.

Nephew Rick cooked Brats on the grill with chips in the side and the rest of the evening was spent catching up and of course story telling. Can't let the evening go without a few tall tales. Rick took an interesting time lapse video of the sunset while we swung around on the hook. That's the first time I had seen a time lapse from the iPhone and it was quite interesting. He caught a pretty sunset too.

Saturday saw us off at 6am. The winds and seas were quite different from the day before. The seas were much more confused and waves were higher. It made it difficult to walk around the boat and at times we had to hang on tight as none of us had our sea legs yet. Both Rick and I were suffering from Sea sickness and visited the stern of the boat a few times. We plowed on though the troopers we were. With the wave and wind direction we wound up making a bee line run for the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. We figured it would be about a 48 hour run and by the time we tied up in Hampton we were dead on accurate for time.

We did drop the RPM down to about 1600 to slow the boat down some. This helped out immensely with the pounding into the waves and we did not slow down all that much and we all agreed it was with it to be more comfortable.

After getting through Saturday and Saturday night we were really feeling the effects of the rough weather and how the boat rocked all around. We constantly had to hold on to something and of course the bench seats were not that comfortable for this long of a trip. We were all feeling a bit overwhelmed at this point and were hoping the weather forecasts would come true and we would see the winds and seas moderate. Sunday morning did bring us relief as the conditions did improve and we could pop our speed back up to 1750 RPM which had us moving about 8 knots through the water.

Laughter was more prevalent and our stomachs were feeling better and breakfast burritos were brought up from the galley. Don was a great trooper to bring them up. Or perhaps was the hungriest man of of the crew and by default made the treacherous journey below.

We were getting more excited as the miles to turn into the bay were clicking down. It was exciting to see the 150, 100 marks go by and the see double digit distances. 75, 50 and then 25 were all highly celebrated and then finally about 1:30am Monday morning we finally turned west into the Chesapeake Bay.

It is a unique experience to sail into the bay at night. Everything looks different at night and distances are so deceiving. On an interesting side bar, I have LED navigation lights on board and they seem to light up the reflective materials on the navigation markers so we can see them from miles away. They appeared so close to us that at times we thought we were going to run into them. It was quite disconcerting at times.

With the challenges of being so tired, on the verge of exhaustion, we made our way into the bay with the challenge of crossing over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel Complex. Our route took us over the southern tunnel and also to,stay out of the way of in coming or out going freighters we crossed and stayed north of the main channel. It made the approach to the tunnel difficult to figure out as were were coming towards it from an unexpected angle but once we got near the channel proper, the tunnel was a breeze to cross over.

Once on the other side, we quickly crossed over to the green side of the channel and continued on our way towards Hampton. Gauging distances in the dark is difficult and we wound up being more north than I thought were were and of course we could see more lights from shore which made picking out the HRBT tunnel more difficult.

We were on course though with the help of our trusty GPS. as we were approaching the tunnel we were hailed on the VHF radio by a Virginia Pilot on an out bound freighter. He saw us via our AIS (Automatic Identification System) asking us our intentions as we were on a blind turn and could not see him yet. We were not in the channel but it was great that he saw us and hailed us as we had not seen him. I replied that we were heading to the Hampton side and would head over there directly thinking we could. He replied that he didn't think we had enough time, so we answered back that we would just stay where we were then and wait for him to pass. It was an interesting exchange and a first for me as freights were usually ignoring pleasure crafts. After he passed us by two incoming freighters were on our tail, so we waited for them to pass by too. We went from no ocean traffic to a traffic jam in the harbor. Well, Rick wanted to see some action and he got it.

One the freights got by and a tug added to the mix we got into gear and made our way to Hampton. With the winds calming and waves nonexistent we had an easy transit to HYC. It felt like I was driving an aircraft carrier down the fairway and into the slip.

I managed to do a pretty good job bringing her in to her new home and didn't hit the neighboring boat or run into the dock. The crew got her tied up in quick fashion and we were all happy to have a happy and safe conclusion to our long trip home.

The other things that happened:

1. For some reason I had an interesting hallucination. I saw something that looked like signs floating in the water all in front of us. Don was at the helm, and I shouted out "What's in front of us?" I told him to kick off the auto pilot took the helm and killed our speed and turned us around. They were everywhere. Don didn't see a thing. It was a strange sighting. Something I'll never forget

I felt totally alright in every other way and don said I seemed lucid in every other way. He insisted I drink some juice and eat something so I did, but these visions continued til sun down. Very strange.

2. As we approached the Chesapeake bay in the wee hours of the morning and very dark, both Don and I saw trees where trees should not be. We knew we were far enough off shore not to be running into trees, but we both saw them. At one point I saw something and asked is that real or fake and should we worry about it? We all laughed.

We eventually figured the clear night was somehow playing with our night vision and we were seeing things that were much farther away than they seemed to be.

3. We all could see the reflective day markers that were all the way across the mouth of the bay. They appeared to be right in front of us but were miles away from us.

Eventually we figured that somehow the LED navigation lights were lighting these reflectors up and we were able to see them, even though they were so far away. At one point I was tempted to turn the nav lights off, but was not worth the effort to prove my theory.

4. As don and I looked up at the stars that final night they looked like they were connected together by tiny dots. Neither of us said anything to the other until the next day after we had been in port.

Both of us had been to embarrassed by other things we had seen to admit it. Later on, when we could start laughing about it, more came out about our hallucinations and that we both saw the same things.

Conclusion:

Overall, it was a great trip. I guess we had to have some bad weather to appreciate the good weather. It was a good trip to bond with my nephew Rick and enjoy my friendship with Don. We laughed at how our food menu choices were so good but we totally lacked in proper meal preparation as it was so difficult to do much with the boat rocking and rolling so much. One meal was brats wrapped up in paper towels to be transported up to the fly bridge in pockets. It was great to enjoy the comradeship and celebrate my purchase with such endearing fellows. At times the trip felt overwhelming, mainly due to weather conditions but we all prevailed. We were a crew and a team. I'm thankful to both Don and Rick and it is an experience I'll treasure. I thank you both.

Steve