Slow day

The wind pretty much feeped in the middle of the night last night. It made
for a good night's sleep, but not much boat speed. We sighted another boat
about 10 miles ahead early this morning. We had just decided we were
overtaking them, when they called on the VHF radio to warn us that they had
just sailed past a large metal object. We kept an eye out as we
approached the point where they had seen it and sure enough some very large
object was bobbing up and down a mile or two to the east of us. Glad we
didn't get better acquainted.

A few hours later we overtook the other boat, which was a 40' sloop with a
husband and wife heading for the Chesapeake Bay.

We managed to get Herb Hilgenberg on the single sideband radio today. We
were too late to check in for today's predictions but by listening to his
advice to other boats we gather that we'll continue to have light winds at
least through tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll know the drill (check-in at 7:30
PM) so we can get guidance from Herb for the rest of the trip.

The Parasailor has made the difference between being able to sail and
having to motor. We have enough fuel aboard to motor about 750 miles and
we have 913 miles to go, so we'll keep sailing and conserve the fuel just
in case we need it later.

The other bit of drama today was that the two bolts that attach the boom
vang to the boom dropped out onto the deck. I'm made satisfactory repairs,
but a proper job of it will have to wait until we reach Newport.

The crew gave me a fair bit of grief for the number of boxes of cookies I
bought for the trip, but I notice that nobody refuses when the come out
after meals. BTW, tonight's dinner was a 2nd night of chilli and garlic
bread. Frank had KP so he got off easy, but we wanted to empty the pot in
any case.

Nick Sr
5/21/11 7:00 PM