{"id":3421,"date":"2014-09-29T20:57:20","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T20:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=3421"},"modified":"2014-09-29T20:57:20","modified_gmt":"2014-09-29T20:57:20","slug":"weather-window-hatteras-here-we-come-maybe-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=3421","title":{"rendered":"Weather window? Hatteras, here we come. Maybe not."},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Monday morning and the sun is just peaking up over the eastern horizon as we make our way into Hampton Rhodes after an overnight from the Rhode River near Annapolis.\u00a0 The sky is overcast but quite dramatic.\u00a0 I tried to time the shot when the lighthouse was blinking.\u00a0 No luck\u2026\"\"<\/a><\/span>The weather was unremarkable for our overnight run, with virtually no wind.\u00a0 All we got was a light shifting 5kts from a variety of directions.\u00a0 No wind.\u00a0 Not so good.\u00a0 Glass like conditions.\u00a0\u00a0 However,\u00a0 really good for an easy run under power.<\/span><\/p>\n

I certainly prefer to sail over motoring, but it\u2019s nice to just turn on the motor and point toward where we need to go.\u00a0 That\u2019s particularly appealing when you are in busy shipping channels such as in Chesapeake Bay, which we were, that\u2019s for sure.<\/p>\n

As we headed down the bay, beginning mid afternoon yesterday, we were constantly being passed by ships come up and down the bay, some as large as nearly 1,000\u2019.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty impressive to see a cruise ship steam by, lit up like a city building.\u00a0 No wait, these monsters are city buildings, or at least a large town, but one that floats.<\/p>\n

In spite of all the traffic, the night was pretty uneventful (that\u2019s good) with a lot of time spent keeping track of ships on AIS, the \u201cautomatic identification system\u201d that all ships have on board and we monitor aboard Pandora.\u00a0 This system transmits their speed and direction and that information is interpreted by my chart plotter to give me a display of CPA \u201cclosest point of approach\u201d and other information regarding each ship that is quite useful.<\/p>\n

In particular, the name of the ship is noted which makes it easy to call them by name.\u00a0 In the past, when I called a ship, noting their general location only, I didn\u2019t usually get a response.\u00a0 Now, knowing where they are and how close they will be to me, perhaps in 20 minutes, takes a lot of the anxiety out of the picture.\u00a0 It\u2019s great to be able to talk to them on the radio and get an immediate answer and advice as to how to stay out of harm\u2019s way.\u00a0 That\u2019s really great, calming actually. .<\/p>\n

In the past, prior to AIS, you had to look at the lights and try and interpret what they were going to do and scramble out of the way, whatever I was able to determine was the way they were going.\u00a0 At night, this was pretty difficult.\u00a0 Much better now, that\u2019s for sure.<\/p>\n

Much of last night was pretty mundane but the highlight for me was when I spied a tug on AIS that was approaching from the south.\u00a0 The name displayed was something like \u201cTug Jim\u201d or other such mundane name.\u00a0 However, the AIS system also tells you where they are going, such as Baltimore, for example.\u00a0 In this case, the signal designated their destination as \u201cThe Hell if I know\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I wonder what the US Coast Guard would think of that.\u00a0 Hmm\u2026\u00a0 I guess \u201cJim\u201d has a sense of humor.<\/p>\n

Anyway, we are now tied up at a dock at the Hampton Yacht Club and are enjoying a day of rest while we wait for the weather off of Cape Hatteras to clear up, if perhaps only briefly.\u00a0\u00a0 I spoke to Chris Parker yesterday and again today and his advice is to time our arrival at Hatteras for around dawn on Wednesday.\u00a0 That suggests a departure from here early on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

NO WAIT\u2026\u00a0 Here\u2019s another idea.\u00a0 With the short weather window to get around Hatteras and all the anxiety that goes with that, let\u2019s just bag it and go through the Dismal Swamp Canal.\u00a0 I like that idea\u2026<\/p>\n

Ok, so, after much debate (in my mind anyway), as I finish this post, we are motoring down to Norfolk where we will go out to dinner and a movie and then leave in the morning to head INSIDE, the easy way, to Beaufort and then a combination of outside and the ICW to GA.\u00a0 There are also crew considerations in all of this and one of my guys has to leave prior to GA so going inside this way makes a lot of sense.\u00a0 Besides, the weather window we need to make the run to GA may very well close before we get there and, well, let\u2019s just say that I got a headache thinking of all the possibilities and just decided to bag the whole thing and go inside.<\/p>\n

And, to top it all, this is supposed to be fun and I just love the run from Newport News to Beaufort and the Dismal Swamp Canal.<\/p>\n

Yes, that\u2019s what we are going to do.\u00a0 And, that route will make for some fun posts.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Monday morning and the sun is just peaking up over the eastern horizon as we make our way into Hampton Rhodes after an overnight from the Rhode River near Annapolis.\u00a0 The sky is overcast but quite dramatic.\u00a0 I tried to time the shot when the lighthouse was blinking.\u00a0 No luck\u2026The weather was unremarkable for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3421"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3424,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3421\/revisions\/3424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}