Day 3 - Now this is cruising!

This is a shot of the moon rising over the Atlantic Ocean at 3am on a nearly calm morning.

Unfortunately I took this on my iPhone and the boat was moving enough to blur it substantially.  The moon was actually just a crescent moon nearly completely dark.  I do like how the moonlight shines on the ocean in our trail.

About 3am, the crescent moon came up on our stern and lit up the flat seas enough to read by. I finished my watch at 4am and handed it over to Steve for the sunrise watch. I wanted to stay up for it but couldn’t make it. Tonight it’s my turn for the sunrise but we may be into the windy winds from the north so not sure if I’ll see it or not. 

Second night - it's 3am on my midnight to 4am watch.  The waters are nearly calm except for the big gentle rollers still coming out of the north.  The air is clearing and visibility is at least 20 miles.  The wind is nearly absent so we're cruising under the Iron Genny (the motor).  We're about 10 miles off Cape Hateras (the farthest point east in the US below Cape Cod) and have just made the big turn back west towards Cape Fear.  

These waters can be some of the wildest in the world and one of my good friends was nearly sunk about another 40 miles further out than we are right now and he and the rest of his crew had to be rescued just before the boat sunk by the USS Teddy Roosevelt aircraft carrier in a fierce storm but he was in a much smaller boat that had developed a serious leak that overwhelmed the batteries and the conditions were a lot worse.  We're having a very quiet ride and I'm enjoying the phosphorescence being kicked up by our wake.  It isn't quite enough to read by but it allows you to see the wake that we're creating up to about a half mile back.   

There was a cruise ship all lit up heading for Bermuda that was following along side us for about 2 hours.  The radar isn’t picking up many new targets but I did motor just west of a fleet of fishing boats out in a restricted area where they shouldn't be. One guy kept turning off his Nav lights and seemed to follow us for a bit as  I could still see him on radar. Hmm.... there aren't any pirates off Virginia these days are there?

It’s warm and stars are shinning on the flat ocean. It is a very peaceful watch with a dark sky full of stars and very little light pollution from the continent. The rest of the crew is fast asleep and I'm enjoying the time alone in the cockpit and I'm sitting up on top of the aft cabin (with my feet in the cockpit and my arm around the mizzen mast as we have a rule that nobody leaves the cockpit at night without being strapped in by harnesss to the jacklines and someone else in the cockpit on watch).  I'm lying back against the dingy watching the 100's of billions of galaxies with the 100's of billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way.  The stars are so bright, it's awe inspiring but also makes you feel somewhat insignificant.  

At 3am, the crescent moon came up on our stern and lit up the now flat seas enough to read by.  4am comes quickly and I hand the boat over to Steve for his sunrise watch and I head off to bed for another nap.  Tonight is my turn for the sunrise but as the weather forecast suggests we might be back into the strong winds from the North, I'm not so sure if I'll see it or not. I entertained the idea of staying up for this sunrise which would be spectacular but after a few seconds in bed being rocked by these waves, I soon gave up on that idea and fall asleep in about 2 minutes.

I'm up at 8am to relieve Steve and find we're all up.  It's perfectly sunny, about 85ºF and even the ocean is 75ºF.  I'm tempted to jump in but none of us want to slow down as we're making good time and want to get clear of the Gulf Stream before the winds go against it again (that makes the waves very steep and break early - which is one of the reasons these waters can be so rough).  We're certainly not seeing any sign of that though... the water is almost like glass.

Here's Steve with his hand on the starboard spinnaker pole set.   We'd just found a dead flying fish on deck that must have jumped on during the night sometime.  None of us heard him.

Steve heading back to the cockpit.  This is a good shot of how the long pole connects to the short pole which is connected to the mast.  When the pole is out, the Genoa (which is furled up around the fuller in this picture) is pushed way out to the side.  Absolutely no point with this complete lack of wind however as the sail would just act as a big anchor to our motor.

Kent decided to put a reel out to see if he could catch some dinner.  I went down to make a big breakfast for us as I was feeling perfectly and figured it would be a good time to try my hand being busy down below.  I no sooner got the pans out than I heard a shout from Kent that he had a fish on.  He said it seemed quite big but wasn't putting up much of a fight so he thought it might be a Dorado (otherwise known as Dolphin Fish or Mahi-Mahi) that got hooked by the side or some such.  After about 5 minutes of heavy reeling, we got a glimpse of it and sure enough it was a 20lb or so Bull Dorado and it seemed to be hooked by the eye as it was being towed a bit sideways through the water.   

Kent asked me to get the gaff (which is attached to one of the side stays) but at the end, he was able to just use the line and lift it into the boat.   Kent keeps a squirt bottle of alcohol by his tackle box to quiet the fish down (you squirt some in the gills and they go completely quiet so you can use the knife and cut into their brain).  The bottle had evaporated however so Steve went and poured in some vodka.  Turns out that, like me, Dorados aren't much affected by Vodka - they seem to like Rum better.  It wasn't hard however to find the spot and

Bull Dorado, Dolphin Fish or Mahi-Mahi

put him out of his misery.  

Kent got a shot on his phone of me holding the Dorado but I haven't seen it yet but this one seems to be about the same size, colours and shape.  He was about 3' long and weighed in about 20 lbs.  The colour of these fish is outstanding but the moment you kill them, they revert to a dull grey.  It's kinda sad but I can say that they're very tasty!

Kent, being a former Internist, can fillet a fish like nobody's business.  We ended up with 10 really good sized fillets without him ever touching the stomach cavity or blood lines.  Kent said he normally packs them in ziplocks full of salt water (and no air) so we did that and put half in one ziplock in the fridge and the other half in the freezer for fish sandwiches later.

Moments before we caught the Dorado

By now, we'd worked up a good appetite so I whipped up some blueberry pancakes, bacon, cheese and onion omelettes with toast and coffee for us (normally we all get what ever we want for breakfast and lunch) and one person would be responsible for dinner and another would be on for cleanup.  The meal went over very well and we looked forward to a lazy day making tracks to the southwest away from the Gulf Stream (which is going at about 3-4 knots north).

Just keep motoring, keep motoring...  It's amazing how quiet the motor is being in a well insulated compartment below the cockpit sole.   I spent a bunch of time in this chair up front looking forwards and looking backwards.

This is a panorama shot so scroll right to see it all.                                                                                         Keep going.............................................             Keep Going.

It did turn out to be pretty lazy. It was in the high eighties as we are very near the Gulf Stream and with the water temperature at 75ºF, shorts and no socks, no shoes and no jackets!  We tried fixing the port side spinaker pole but the guy who had supposedly fixed it before we left had screwed it up and we didn’t have the tools to take apart and put it back together right so we gave up and just enjoyed each other’s company. 

I'm sitting up front in that chair taking the picture straight down into the ocean and that's the reflection of the boat and the clouds that you see in the water.  

Looks just as good from the other side.

And of me taking the picture sitting in my favourite chair!

We motored southwest all day and we passed the time by replacing the impeller in the generator (we'd gotten a high temperature alarm shortly after firing it up on day 2) and by trooubleshooting the AIS problem by swapping out components.   While we did get the generator working again, we weren't able to figure out the AIS issue because we didn't have any targets!  

Even with the motor on, you can barely hear it and we’re just cruising along at 6.5 kts doing only 2200 rpms on the big Yanmar diesel burning just under 1 US gallon per hour.  We’re making excellent time and should be there in under 5 days (we'd planned for up to two weeks) at this rate especially with the strong winds expected tomorrow from the northeast for the next few days.  

There is some question as to whether or not we go to St Augustine as apparently it sustained some damage from Irma and isn’t quite ready so we may stop earlier at Brunswick Georgia, Jacksonville Florida or stay out and go much further south to Ft Lauderdale. More to come.   

It's amazing how quickly the day went by and it was time for me to make dinner.  Because Kent had caught that Dorado that morning, Kent wanted to make his special Fish dish with his homemade salsa.  I'd planned for a Scallop/Spinach/Bacon dish over rice so decided we'd have the Scallops without the rice as an appetizer which would give Kent more time to prepare his salsa fish dish. I wanted to learn so I helped Kent make his "world famous" Mahi-Mahi dish (in a well butttered Cassarole dish place fish fillets, mango, pineapple and banana chunks season with salt/pepper, paprika and nutmeg and put in 350ºF oven for 20 minutes covered and 10 minutes off). He also did up a broccoli/grape salad with a philly cheese/honey and sugar dressing.  We ate like kings. 

Oven???  Yes, you heard me right. This boat has an oven with a 3 burner gas stove, a microwave, two fridges, two freezers, a dishwasher, a washer/dryer, a water maker, running hot water and two full bathrooms (heads) complete with showers. It even has separate air conditioning in all three cabins. We don’t use the dishwasher, a/c or washer/dryer at sea but with the generator this boat also has, we could if we wanted. I think I’m in love.   Fine seafood, delicious fresh fish and nice cold beers to wash them down while watching this sunset... can life get much better?

I watched for the green flash ....

but we never saw it.  We're about 40 miles off Cape Fear at this point.  That's a fishing boat off our starboard side.  He's about 8 miles away.

The rule is that he who cooks, doesn't do dishes, but since I'd only done an appetizer and the guys had done most of the cooking and cleaning up until then, I decided I'd do it all and clean up as well.   We had set up a rotating watch schedule that worked very well.  One person would take 8pm-midnight, another would take midnight to 4am and the third would take 4am to 8am.  The next night we'd shift it by one watch so that we each got a sunrise, a dead of night watch and the easy watch from 8pm to midnight.  Tonight was to be my 4am to 8am sunrise watch so I was really looking forward to this. 

The day went by very quickly and it’s amazing how fast time flies when under way. We’re 2 days and 8 hrs in and have done 395.5 nautical miles (out of 685) so we’re already more than halfway there now.  I’m on at 4am so I’m off to bed. Looking forward to spending "Brent time" watching the sunrise if the weather holds.