2015.06.11, 11.18PM
Position: 33° 19’ N 65° 33’ W
11:18pm. We're back on NYC time since departing Bermuda this morning. After only one full day ashore, we're back to sea again on Blue Heron for the return journey to the USA mainland. The short respite was pretty nice actually - not enough time to get fully acclimated to land life again, so we still have our sea-legs.
Jen left us in Bermuda to be replaced by her friend Alyce, who flew out on Monday and met us on arrival. Both girls went to college together and met Doug & Tasha, Blue's owners, at a sailing class they all took together a few years back in NYC. This is the first offshore sailing passage for both of them as well.
It's nearly midnight now and it sure feels like it. The moon is on the wane, and just a sliver remains, but it won't rise again until just before dawn, so it's a black night sky filled with stars. There's no point in trying to describe them to someone back ashore. You simply have to see it to believe it. I saw two satellites (or maybe the same one twice) go overhead tonight, a moving star gliding across the night sky. I wonder if it was the International Space Station? Coincidentally, I heard a song for the first time today by the band called 'The Long Winters' titled 'The Commander Thinks Out Loud'. It was written after the Columbia shuttle disaster. The song's an emotional one, but it was good.
There are nearly just as many 'stars' in the ocean itself tonight - the phosphorescence is strong here, perhaps because there is so little other light pollution, really just from our instruments in the cockpit. The sea is flat calm, and we're motor boating. Less than five knots of wind tickle the waves, and just a gentle swell lifts the bow up once in a while. We did manage to sail at 4-5 knots for much of the afternoon immediately after departing Bermuda, messing around with the spinnaker. It's an asymmetrical type, but the wind was far aft, so we experimented by running the tack to the spin pole and using the sail essentially like a symmetrical chute. The wind came around after a bit, so we tacked it down to the bowsprit (another good 'simulation'!) and kept on sailing until dinnertime. Since then we've been a trawler.
With a good long-range forecast and no tropical activity on the horizon (fingers crossed), we're aiming to see how straight we can make our track on this leg. As opposed, of course, to the zig-zag route we took to get to Bermuda! Now we just hope that the wind comes up with the sun tomorrow.
Until next time...
