Day 239, Year 6 Passage to Cape Cod, Day 3–Weather, Weather
Date: Monday, June 20, 2011, 5:30 pm
Weather: Overcast with Heavy Rain All Day
Wind: Currently NE 22-32 Knots
Latitude: 37 18.652 N
Longitude: 073 44.624 W
Location: Offshore Delmarva Peninsula
Miles Traveled: 328

Rex says he is “one with the water” and right now that is a good thing. The rain has come down in torrents all day and Windbird has lost her reputation as the driest boat on the seas. Our cockpit enclosure is leaking everywhere, so there is no way to sit in the cockpit without getting wet. The wind has been backing all day and is now coming from the northeast, exactly the direction we need to go. And the wind is coming in torrents as well as the rain. It goes from 22 to 25 knots and then up to 30 to 32 and then back. So today, June 20, 2011, with its strong winds, heavy rain, building seas, and miserable condition in the cockpit gets our vote as the single-most miserable day of our entire circumnavigation. We’ve had rougher conditions and a few miserable nights, but we can’t remember a day with these conditions. I guess Neptune has been saving up the best for last to give us this one last test. Thankfully Rex has not succumbed to seasickness again even though he removed the patch this morning. He is being a trouper and hanging in there. But to add to our miseries, our 110-volt electrical system has gone out. Mark hasn’t had time yet to figure out the problem, so we are using a DC adaptor for our main navigation computer. Everything onboard except the computers and battery chargers run off DC, so we are fine for now, but what a pain. We spent most of the morning beating into wind and seas which made for a very rough ride, so we probably have a loose connection somewhere. Right now we are having to head due west toward land as we can’t possibly beat into 30 knots of wind. So for now we are not making progress toward our destination. We are just running with the wind in order to keep from beating. We were making such good time so this is a disappointing set-back, but hopefully conditions will change sometime during the night allowing us to head back to the northeast.