Off soundings and on our way to a 170 mile day

It’s Friday afternoon and we have been underway for about 21 hours since leaving Essex.   The wind is on our stern and blowing about 20kts.  Pandora is tooling along at between 7-8 kts and doing very well under the control of the autopilot.

Since leaving Essex yesterday we have covered 150 miles and are currently about 20 miles off of Barnegat Inlet in central New Jersey.  With about 80 miles between us and the mouth of the Delaware River, off of Cape May, we are making great time.  If the wind keeps up for the next few hours we will have put in a 170 mile day.  Not to shabby, and, particularly impressive given the fact that we motored down the river, out the race and nearly all the way to Montauk against a flood tide.  On top of that, we also had a headwind until about an hour after rounding Montauk around Midnight.  I am pretty impressed to have made it 150 miles at an average speed of just over 7kts.  Not so shabby.

The wind has moderated somewhat but we are still making a good 7kts on deep broad reach with a single reefed main.  We had the jib out but it was banging around in the lee of the main, making a racket and not doing much. 

As it was pretty windless when we left, the seas were quite flat.  However, by this morning with over 20kts of wind, things got pretty lumpy.  Happily, it has moderated somewhat but there is still a good sea running and enough wind to keep us moving along at a good clip.

We will likely make the turn up the Delaware River in the wee hours of Saturday, probably a few hours prior to the flood turning the tide upstream.  However, that will work out well as we will carry the full food up much of the time and then through the C&D canal as we make our way toward the upper Chesapeake.  I am hopeful that my crew, Roger and Jim, both great to have on board, BTW, will be happy to stop for Saturday night as I do enjoy staying in Chesapeake City on the western end of the canal.  

After a good night sleep, on to Annapolis.

I am afraid that there’s not too much to report that’s very exciting except lots of grey waves.  We did hear on the radio last evening that someone had suffered a heart attack on a fishing boa, way off shore.  And it sounded to us, based on the back and forth with the US Coastguard, that he didn’t make it.  Suffering a catastrophic event when you are miles from shore is certainly not a good thing.

Anyway, enough morbid stuff.   Better to think about what fun it will be to be back in Annapolis.  I talked to my son Rob last evening while we were still in cell range, and he’s going to stop and have dinner with me and probably spend the night on board, on Wednesday.

Well, here’s to a continued speedy voyage to Annapolis. I do so hope that the run from Annapolis to GA is as good.