Day One---Into the Blue
18 March 2015 | just out of Norfolk going southeast
Alan
Wednesday 3:36 am
Well it turns out that we had reversed a connection when wiring the charging system and that was the cause of our fault. We did figure it out by some miracle and switched the wires at the charge distributor and all was good...
I was sure we were going to be in port for a few days to fix the fault but it was done in less than an hour so we left!
We covered 40 nm in about 4 hours! It's blowing strong out there. 30 to 35 kts but the boat is going down wind with just the jib now so its very comfortable inside. We got the usual bay entrance traffic as we were going at 10 knots thru the Ches Bay bridge. With 2 kts of current in our favor the boat was reaching often over 11kts. As the wind climbed into the low 30's we just lowered the main and dropped speed about 3 kts to settle at about 5.7 to 6.4.
It's definitely colder with that wind out of the North: full foul weather gear, hats and gloves de rigueur. We kept both awake until about 2 then I napped for an hour and now it's Nat's turn.
4pm
So we really got pretty cold from 2am till midmorning.
Now the water temp is climbing steadily as we approach the Gulf Stream from 40F this am to 56F now!
We're about 10 nm from the edge of the continental shelf and probably about 30nm from the Gulf Stream's North Wall (really the inshore edge of the stream). The wind has been less than 20 kts for a couple hours now and we should really brave the moderate cold outside and raise the main which has been down since 3am. We're being comfy inside the boat but a little lazy as always at the beginning of a long crossing after the shore stress of the days before departure, and the fact that we're getting our sea legs.
This am a US war ship came on the VHF and gave their position and said that they wanted nobody within 15nm because the were doing live amo target practice ! ah ...ok...thanks, let me just put another sail on so I can get out of you hair within a few hours! Actually the was a big ship next to us who called "warship 55" and the warship answered that they were shooting the other way. phewww...!
Mostly comfort food today: lunch was grilled cheese and tomato soup and breakfast: pancake and eggs and maple syrup.