Kitty did a wonderful job with Part 1 of this post, so I will just add a few random thoughts written along the way and afterward.

Day 4 - AM Reprise

I was pretty groggy this morning during my 3-6 am watch, having slept poorly during my time off from midnight to 3. I did what I could to wake myself up in the cockpit. I did 20 knee bends holding on to the sides of the companionway hatch. I mixed some Nuum flavoring into my waterbottle and drank half the bottle. I snacked on Chex Mix which Kitty had brilliantly stashed into our provisions. I still found myself dozing occasionally, wakened by my watch alarm at 15 minute intervals to remind me to scan the horizon for ships.

The eastern sky started to lighten around 530, and I turned to watch the sunrise. In the rosy darkness near where the sun would arrive were 4 planets in an exact line. Checking my star app I found out they were Jupiter, Neptune, Mars, and Saturn. In between them on the same line was the sliver of a waning moon. It was beautiful - the sort of thing that would have passed unnoticed in my land-based life.

Then Kitty's head popped through the hatch to relieve me, and I went into my berth and crashed.



Day 7 - Time Travel

Time is a funny thing on an extended sailing passage. When traveling on land we have a clear understanding of the intended destination and ETA. When Kitty and I drive from NJ to Maine, for instance, we know it will take 6-8 hours (depending on who is driving!) and our journey will almost certainly end at our cottage on Great Pond. This is completely different on a long sailing passage. We set out from St. Thomas on Friday, with an intended destination of Norfolk Va. Just 24 hours earlier, our intended destination had been Bermuda but an Atlantic low pressure system made that untenable. Where will we actually set foot on land? Not clear. It could be in Jacksonville Florida, Charleston South Carolina, or the Bahamas, depending on an Appalachian cold front, an Atlantic high pressure ridge, or a myriad of other factors beyond our control. How long will it take? Our best guess is 10 days, but we have provisioned for 20 just in case. Getting used to this uncertainty is one of the many gifts of a long term sail.





I am reminded of our time in Tenerife where we moored alongside a steel sailboat named Walkabout. We met the skipper Thomas, a German sailor who treated us to a wonderful dinner of homemade squash soup and fried bread. Thomas told amazing stories of the adventures that he had with his wife Frauka. When their daughter moved to Argentina they bought a sailboat and sailed across the Atlantic to visit her. They both love to hike, and so later they sailed to the US, stored the boat, and hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. Later, they sailed the boat to New Zealand and hiked the entire length of both the north and south islands. When we met them, they were heading off across the Atlantic, intending to store the boat in South Carolina while they hiked the entire coastline of Florida. Thomas described their longest offshore passage, in which they sailed for 53 days without seeing land. They wept when they saw their intended destination, not for joy but in sadness that their voyage was ending. I think of them often, and my hope is to enjoy our passage for all that it brings without thinking too much of the intended destination.

Day 9 - Route Finding, the Gulf Stream, and Diesel Quandaries

Every morning we used our satellite phone to download an email update from Charlie our weather router as well as our own weather data. Then we would make our plan for the next 24 hours. Sometimes the plan was straightforward - keep on heading at a compass direction of 330 degrees with the wind on our beam. But other times it was a real head scratcher, like when we approached the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream current runs generally northeast at 1-4 knots, and a key part of our strategy was to use this to boost our progress up the coast. That seems simple...but where is the darn thing? It turns out that the Gulf Stream meanders around, changes location constantly, and has nasty countercurrents on each side. When we got to where we thought the stream was we sailed at a 90 degree angle to try to hit the main flow... no current. We watched the ocean temperature to see if we could detect the warmer water... the ocean temperature rose to 81, but now the current was against us. Went a few miles further, but now the water temperature dropped... had we gone too far? Argh! But wait, lets try turning north... aha! Ithaka zoomed along at 8.1 knots with a 3.1 knot boost. Yay!



We also spent a lot of time strategizing on the amount of diesel that we had left. Yes, we are a sailboat but the winds can be fickle and we had no desire to be carried off to Bermuda if we were becalmed or the winds turned westerly.

We leapfrogged decisionpoints up the coast: Off of Charleston, good wind predicted, 1/2 tank of fuel - let's keep going. Uh oh, becalmed off Beaufort, should we refuel? Wind picks back up as predicted, looks good to try to round Cape Hatteras, so let's go. Made it past Hatteras, nice...wind is good, let's skip Norfolk and try to make it straight to NY! Wind dies again... hmm the wind is predicted to pick up and we might be able to make it to NY without a stop. That would be awesome! But a little risky, so we decide to head into Cape May for a fuel stop. That turned out to be fortuitous - the winds died half way up the coast and we would have been bobbing around trying to call Seatow off of Atlantic City.





Code Zero Follies

Through all of this we continued to have adventures with our Code 0 sail. It was wonderful in the light winds, almost like a spinnaker, and we were able to furl it when the winds picked up. However, it became partially unfurled in the midst of a big blow, making an incredible racket and threatening to destroy the sail. After a couple hour struggle we were able to wrestle it back into the boat without dislocating any shoulders or being tossed overboard. If this passage was our final exam, our Code 0 grade is definitely "Needs Work."





Grateful, and an Excerpt from my Favorite Poem

We have been back for a few days now, and I have had a little more time to catch my breath and reflect. Kitty and I fell in love 45 years ago while working on wilderness orientation trips for Cornell freshmen. The last year has been the latest chapter in our extended adventure together and has taken us back to our roots. What an amazing year it has been - new countries visited, challenges met together, with the opportunity to share these with family and friends both new and old (including all of our blog followers and commenters, thank you!). It has offered us an opportunity to time-travel back to our more youthful selves and reflect on and relive the early building blocks of our relationship. For all of this I will be eternally grateful, with the biggest part of my gratitude reserved for my loving, wise and capable partner. Love ya, Kitty.... where are we going next?


Ithaka (exerpted) by C.P. Cavafy

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island...

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.