This swell issue happened once before. Last night the wind and water were calm. Then suddenly in the middle of the night, swells showed up, annoyingly bouncing the boat around. For maybe an hour or so. I went outside and looked. The water was glassy and there was not much wind to speak of, but the swells kept coming. Wake from a boat has a quicker frequency and wouldn’t leave the water glassy. Or last for a hour.

I learned my lesson from the other day, so this morning, while pulling up anchor, I squirted the mud off the chain before it reached the anchor locker so I wasn’t rinsing a lot of mud down the anchor locker drain. But again, the deck wash quit early. A quick trip down below fixed it. You aren’t supposed to use wire nuts on a boat because the vibration can work them loose. I have been replacing them as I go, even though none had failed ... until now. I will replace those wire nuts next.

We met Bob and Phyllis and their cat Lucy (okay, I’ve never actually met the cat) on the sailboat Gabriel at the end of the Erie Canal. Today I caught up with them as we both headed south (I could see them on AIS). Unfortunately, the best I could do was to get in touch over the radio, not in person. To get to Hampton today meant I had to push the speed and could not steer over to join them.

When my brother taught me to do 360 degree sweeps of the water for boats, he never mentioned airborne craft. I was sitting in the bow of the boat talking to my other brother on the phone, when I had to end the conversation with, “I have to go back to the cockpit now to avoid this helicopter.” Really - I had to go around him. And he kept his helicopter facing me the whole time to make sure I did.

Near Hampton, I had to watch out for several military ships and one overtaking container ship. I also suddenly came upon 6-7 dolphins. They were on both sides of me almost touching the boat and I felt like I ran right over some of them. I got out my camera hoping for pictures - you can’t get any closer to dolphins than running them over. But apparently they didn’t take too kindly to that, because they disappeared. Completely vanished. I tried to apologize, but to no avail. Let me point out, however, that they were the ones who ran in front of me. They need to look both ways.

Today was another motor. The wind was from behind, but I did get the genoa out for a few hours to help me against the current. Then the wind died, but the current had let up by then.

Tomorrow I plan to make a 40 hour trip down the coast in the Atlantic Ocean.