{"id":7825,"date":"2017-10-22T13:17:56","date_gmt":"2017-10-22T18:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=7825"},"modified":"2017-10-22T13:17:56","modified_gmt":"2017-10-22T18:17:56","slug":"leg-one-to-antigua-so-far-so-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=7825","title":{"rendered":"Leg one to Antigua.\u00a0 So far, so good…"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Sunday morning and we are about 50 miles from the entrance to the Chesapeake where we will join the rest of the fleet in Hampton before heading to\u00a0 Antigua.\u00a0 As I write this we are sailing at about 7kts on a close reach with a 10kts balmy breeze.\u00a0 It\u2019s a beautiful morning and a wonderful time to be on the water.<\/p>\n

As luck would have it, we passed Saybrook Light, at the mouth of the CT River, just as the sun was setting behind the breakwater.\u00a0 It was a good omen for our voyage.\u00a0 \"\"While we were able to sail for about the first 12 hours, we have been motoring for the last day as we passed through a slow moving high that was working its way off the coast and killed the wind.<\/p>\n

As the high hovered over us, the wind died almost completely and the seas were as calm as a lake.\u00a0 I don\u2019t enjoy motoring hour after hour but I’ll take that any time over pounding into wind and waves.\u00a0 Motoring along was quite peaceful,\u00a0 in a \u201cdroning diesel\u201d sort of way.\u00a0 At least, all that \u201cwhite\u201d noise, perhaps better described as \u201cgrey noise\u201d as in sooty diesel noise, made for good sleeping.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, after motoring for hours and hours overnight, the wind picked up at daybreak today, just enough to sail along with the big “Code 0” head sail.\u00a0 It\u2019s been nice to enjoy the sound of water rushing along the hull after all that motoring.\u00a0 \u00a0Oh yeah, and it\u2019s sunny to boot.\u00a0\u00a0 Also, the last two nights were spectacularly clear with stars in all directions made even brighter by a new moon.\u00a0 We were also treated to a few shooting stars.\u00a0 Beautiful.<\/p>\n

Along the way, as is so often the case when we are on passage, we were joined by a very tired little bird when we were perhaps 40 miles off of NY.\u00a0\u00a0 I often wonder how many little birds end up at sea with no place to land and just fall into the water when they get to tired to carry on.\u00a0\u00a0 We are generally joined by one or more small birds when we are on passage and yesterday was no exception.\u00a0 Oddly, these birds are always quite docile, perhaps because they are just to exhausted to run away when they arrive. \u00a0This little guy hopped all around the boat and even landed on each of us.\u00a0 He even \u201csnuggled?\u201d up to James.\"\"How about some light reading?\"\"I guess that he realized that he was in rough shape when he perched on the EPIRB.\u00a0 \u201cMayday, mayday.\u00a0 I\u2019m a really little bird and in distress.\u201d\"\"Unfortunately, as is so often the case with these little visitors, he died overnight.\u00a0 I did give him a \u201csort of\u201d proper sea burial.\u00a0\u00a0 Adios amigos.\u00a0 Overboard you go.\u00a0 Ashes to ashes, dust to dust\u2026.\u00a0 Fish food.<\/p>\n

There is A LOT of boat traffic between NY and the Delaware River and this trip was no different.\u00a0 In particular, there are always many boats anchored off of the mouth of the river.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As we approached the \u201cfleet\u201d of a dozen 800\u2019 tankers anchored, I wondered if perhaps I\u2019d need to divert to go around them.\u00a0 While this shot of the plotter makes it look like we\u2019d have trouble threading our way between them, we ended up continuing on our course without diverting even a single degree from our course and never came closer than \u00bd mile of anyone.\u00a0\u00a0 I did check, more than once, to be sure that none of them decided to pull anchor and get underway while we were close.\u00a0 I was happy when we were past them and again in the clear.\"\"As luck would have it, we will likely arrive at the mouth of the Chesapeake at slack tide before the flood so the flooding current will give us a lift of a few knots as we make our way the final 30 miles into Hampton.\u00a0\u00a0 Last May, when I entered Hampton, I wasn\u2019t so lucky, arriving with the tide in full ebb so it took me nearly 10 hours to make that same run, bucking a 2-3kt current the entire way.\u00a0 It was tedious and annoying and we didn\u2019t get to the marina until about 05:00.\u00a0 It was a very long day at the end of a 10 day run from Tortola. \u201cAre we there yet?\u201d<\/p>\n

With a flooding tide this go around, it will be a lot more pleasant and take less than half the time.\u00a0 Amazing how much difference a few knots of positive, or negative, current can have on a trip.<\/p>\n

Nice view forward on a beautiful sailing day.\"\"Not to Jinx it as we aren\u2019t there quite yet, but it\u2019s been an uneventful trip on my first leg of the run to Antigua and a winter afloat.\u00a0 \u00a0Let\u2019s hope that leg two, all 1,500 miles of it, turns out to be this easy.<\/p>\n

As Brenda once quipped, \u201cBob and the dog, ever hopeful\u201d.\u00a0 Yes, that\u2019s me.\u00a0 Can I have a cookie?<\/p>\n

Editor:\u00a0\u00a0Oh yeah, if you are wondering about photos on the post and yet at sea, we are close to the Delmarva Peninsula so there is cell coverage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Sunday morning and we are about 50 miles from the entrance to the Chesapeake where we will join the rest of the fleet in Hampton before heading to\u00a0 Antigua.\u00a0 As I write this we are sailing at about 7kts on a close reach with a 10kts balmy breeze.\u00a0 It\u2019s a beautiful morning and a […]<\/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-7825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7825","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=7825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7832,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7825\/revisions\/7832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}