Our first sailing cruise from Florida, to the coast of Maine, and all that happens on the way.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Today was the day we were finally gonna to move south. We took Bella for a walk and I picked up some fruit and then stopped at Ed's to say goodbye and thank you for all he had done for us. We invited him to Florida anytime he wants he is welcome with us..The trip for the day started out with very gray overcast skies, light wind and 1 to 2 foot rolling seas. Perfect.. But just as we were getting near the end of the channel the motor started to overheat, so we put the anchor down while Carl looked for the problem.. He checked the seawater strainer for debris and it was clean, then he checked the water flow of the sea cock to make sure it was clear. He couldn't seem to find any problems so we started up and ran a bit slower than we had been but with the main sail up. After a couple of hours the fog rolled in . And I mean thick, like pea soup. This can be very scary.. We don't have radar or a chart plotter and we couldn't see a thing. Sometime we could see about 150 ft around the vessel. Other times we couldn't see 2 feet around us. So Carl dropped our speed and we kept a sharp eye out.. This can be down right terrifying.... I had put Bella and myself in our life jackets and set Carl's on the cushion right next to him, open and ready to put on. At all times we were looking for a ship to come out of the fog and hit us. We weren't to worried about hitting something, other than a boat, as we kept checking the GPS. Normally we check our position every hour and in light fog it was every half hour, but in the really dense fog it was every 10 or 15 mins..We kept rolling in and out of different density. The only remaining good thing was that the sea was completely flat like glass. As we got nearer to the inlet into Cape May, NJ, I couldn't take it anymore with all that we had already been through, and started to cry.. I know what a big baby, but hey after hours of this it tends to get to you. And after all I am just a girl.. Finally as we arrived at the entrance to Cape May, the sun came out and cleared the fog away..Just in time to see the channel markers. Thank god we could see the big rock jetties and the other boats.. It was a hell of a day at sea... We dropped anchor just about were we had stayed on the way north, and I had a drink.. That's right I needed one...We hung out in the cockpit, and all of us relaxed.. I took a nice sunset picture of the boat behind us and one of Carl and Bella playing on deck, then I made dinner and we hung around outside and played cloud imagination games.. Today as I got up Carl was already hard at work on the motor..
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I don't like running in fog with radar and a plotter, eek, nothing worse,truly nerve racking. Glad the sun did it's thing and burned it off for the channel run. Hope the overheat is something simple.
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