Day 122, Year 11: Day Three, Passage to Little River—Lovely Day
Date: Sunday, February 21, 2016
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Hi 70’s, Low 50’s, Wind ENE 8-10, Seas Calm
Latitude: 29 57.914 N
Longitude: 081 12.258 W
Location: Motor Sailing Along Florida’s E Coast—Just N of St. Augustine
Total Miles Traveled: 215 nautical miles (5:30 pm)
What a lovely day! My midnight shift was moonlit and uneventful. How wonderful! Kevin was on watch from 1:30 to 4:30 pm, letting Mark sleep through the night. Another wonderful thing. When I came on watch at 4:30 pm the almost full moon was low in the sky and beautiful. When it set, you could start to see light on the horizon in anticipation of sunrise. It was just beautiful. We were still essentially motoring and continued that way until noon. Mark was down napping and I had just come up from my morning nap. Kevin had been waiting for a someone to get up and help him put out the headsail. We had 8-10 knots right on the beam and putting out the headsail gave us at least an extra knot of speed. So all afternoon, and now continuing into the evening, we are actually motor sailing over 6 knots. We have been moving along at about 6.8 knots all afternoon, but as the sun is setting, the wind is moving further behind us and we are losing a bit of our speed. But it has been a lovely afternoon.
The only things we have seen have been fishing boats and birds. That gannets litter the water here and there and I never tire of seeing them. What I don’t like to see littering the water is Mylar balloons. We saw some yesterday and again today. All of us need to resist the desire to give these balloons in celebration of special holidays. It seems too many of them end up escaping and landing in the ocean.
We doubt that we can keep up our current speed, but even going a knot slower, we are hopeful that we might be able to go all the way to Little River, arriving early in the AM on Wednesday. If we can do that, we just might get in before the weather gets too bad. We have a chance of showers and thunderstorms on Tuesday, but it gets windier and stormier on Wednesday. So one way or another, we will be inside by early Wednesday morning.
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| 160221 Day 122 Passage to LR–Moon, Sunrise, Ocean Litter, Motor Sailing |
