Day 82, Year 10: Passage to FL, Day 2–New Year’s Eve
Date: Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Weather: Overcast All Morning, Sunny in the Afternoon, High 50’s F, NE Wind 10
Latitude: 31 55.561 N
Longitude: 080 46.149 W
Location: Motor Sailing ~5 Miles Off the Georgia Coast, Just S of Savannah
Miles Traveled: 172 Nautical Miles
It’s New Year’s Eve and we will spend our evening celebrating our trek south. The weather has not been perfect, but it has been as good as you could ask for this time of year. The north winds are holding, but are light today. Thus we are motor sailing. But the seas are relatively calm and the temperature is rising. The sun came out this afternoon and the outside temp is in the 50’s F. When we reach Cumberland Island tomorrow, the temp will reach the 60’s and then the 70’s on Friday. Woohoo! It did get cold in the cockpit last night, but wrapping up in a polar fleece blanket kept us warm enough. The main cabin has maintained a temp of 68 degrees F, so it is cozy below. Lee and Lynda had an unfortunate happening today, but at least it is nothing that can’t be fixed. They carry their inflatable dinghy on a rack on their reverse transom and the wishy, washy motion of a downwind sail caused their dinghy to repetitively move against something that rubbed a hole. I can remember the feeling when we reached St. Martin in 2005 of opening the clothes closet to find nicely rubbed holes in the sleeves of shirts that touched the bungee cord I had wrapped around the clothes to keep them away from the metal hardware on the closet door. Subsequently I put a towel between the clothes and the bungee cord which solved that problem. So the lesson here is that if there is anything on a boat that can move and it rubs against another item, a hole will result. Lesson number two, which I should know well, is that anything that is not tied down will fall over. We have a big plastic bin that normally sits upside down on the back deck protecting our generator from the weather. On passage, we bring the generator into the cockpit and put the bin in the v-berth. Mark filled it with paper towel rolls and then I threw in some new books and put a big plastic carton of eggs on top thinking it was a nice soft place to store the extra eggs. Of course, the bin flipped over and everything came tumbling out. Lucky for us, the eggs did not break. If they had, I can’t even imagine the mess in the v-berth.
I’m reading a book Justin and Jo got me for Christmas. It’s a novel about a lightkeeper and his wife who live on Janus Island. Good book, “The Light Between Oceans” by M. L. Stedman. But I mention it here because the origin of the word January is mentioned in the book. Janus Island is at the end of a line of sea mounts jutting out from the southwest coast of Australia. On one side of the island is the Indian Ocean and on the other is the Southern Pacific. In Roman mythology, Janus was the god of beginnings and transitions The word comes from the Latin word for door and Janus has two faces—one looking back into the past and the other looking forward into the future. When you stop and think about it, January is like a door you go through to the new year, but not before looking back at the old. So when you are reminiscing tonight, think of old two-faced Janus. And have a very Happy New Year!
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| 141231 Day 82 Passage to Florida–Day 2, New Year's Eve Boat Problems |
