After finally getting out back into the water for the second time for our emergency repairs we had to wait another 24 hours for the boat to settle so Shearwater Marine could come do a final alignment on the engine, shaft, and prop. Unfortunately (and it figures…) this took way longer than anyone predicted. This boat just likes to fight! However finally they were finished and since our weather window is NOW we tossed off the dock lines and just headed straight out the inlet!
So you may be wondering, “hey, what happens at night since you can’t park the boat?”. Well, I napped most of the afternoon and then Jason made me a quad shot latte and I took the night watch! Usually there’s nothing out there to hit so I just kept an eye on the radar for other boats and made sure the sails didn’t do weird things while I lounged about and watched movies on my phone until about 4 in the morning when I turned the boat back over to Jason! Maybe all those trips to Japan and dealing with jet lag prepared me to easily take overnight watches? Either way, jason was happy to have most of the night to sleep!
Once I woke up mid morning we kind of just sat around the boat staring at the water. Pretty boring, which is infinitely preferable to excitement and terror. Although I spoke too soon on that. While we left Florida before the afternoon thunderstorms really get into full swing we didn’t miss them all and a nasty little cloud popped up from seemingly nowhere. Not only did it totally screw up our wind direction but it also spawned a water spout. Which… water spout is just a cutesy little name for what’s essentially a water tornado. ::panic and flail::
Sure it looks pretty far away but with us being hundreds of miles out in the open ocean it was still way too damn close! We diverted around it just to be safe. The rest of the day was uneventful and I did another long night shift watching pretty much the rest of the content I have downloaded onto my phone.
Our goal was to bypass all of Florida and Georgia and head as far north as the weather would allow. Our original goal was Charleston, SC but the wind was still good so we pushed on to Beaufort, NC! We would have gone further but the wind swung north and died so we already had to motor and didn’t want to motor for another two days so we decided to stop. This was our first big ocean passage for a total of 3 overnights, 470 nautical miles, and 62 hours!
We made it! 🙂