current date: 16 May 2005

Whew. Windom is anchored in the Herb River near Savannah, and we are rested up and ready to tackle the task of finding a place and putting the boat away. After the first sleepless night, we both managed to get probably 6 hours a day - although never all in a row! We had a good passage even though the actual wind direction was more northeast than forecast, so we were hard on the wind much of the time. But we got used to being tilted over, the waves were not actually all that big so it wasn't too bumpy, and we just zoomed along

As it turned out, we wandered all over the darn ocean looking for that Gulf Stream. As the wind came more northeast on us, rather than the east-southeast we were expecting, we were forced closer to the Florida coast and ended up losing much of our good current - of course, we were still making good speed. But the wind slowly clocked around, and we were able to close our "Gulf Stream Axis" route line. And the Gulf Stream is so wide that even when we weren't right in the strongest current we still had between .5-2.5 knots helping us along. This put our speed over ground up to 7-9 knots. The fastest instantaneous speed recorded by the GPS was a blistering 10.2, and our fastest 24 hour average speed was 7.8. (A knot, for those of you non-knotical types, is 1 nautical mile per hour, or about 1.1 mph. So yeah, your grandmother on her bicycle could probably pass us...provided her bicycle could pedal on the Atlantic.)

We caught up with a few other cruising sailboats heading north, and were probably passed by a few others. (It's embarrassing to admit, but I gleefully watched the blip on the radar that represented another sailboat falling farther and farther behind.) We saw lots of shipping, of course; container ships and bulk carriers and one cruise ship that was lit up like a shopping mall at Christmastime - so lit up that I could hardly see its navigation lights, which are important to see because they let you know whether or not the ship is going to run over you.

I am more nervous than most people, probably, about being run over by a ship. I'm the sort of person who won't pass a slow car on a two-lane unless I can't see any oncoming cars for miles. On the boat, as soon as I see a big blip on the radar I put up the little "electronic bearing line": if the blip approaches at a constant angle, right along the line, then that vessel is on a collision course with us. But because a sailboat tilts and wiggles, the blip zigzags down the screen, and it's frequently difficult to determine if the other vessel is actually going to come close enough to worry about. That's why I always race to the cockpit with binoculars as soon as I can see the ship's lights. Along with a variety of white lights, ships carry a red light on the port side and a green on the starboard, set so that you can only see one or the other unless you're directly in front.

And to be honest, the chances of getting hit are practically nil as long as at least one person on one of the vessels involved is paying attention. We can "see" ships on radar more than 20 miles away, and small boats at about 6. The regulation lights are visible at 6 miles on ships and 2 on small boats, which gives everyone plenty of time to get out of each other's way. One evening I saw a ship-blip that looked as though it might be coming toward us; I went up to the cockpit to get a visual, and when I lifted the binocs I could see both red and green lights. But as I watched, the green light disappeared - the ship's crew had seen us and turned so as to pass us port-to-port, which was awfully nice of them because even though technically sailboats have the right-of-way over powered vessels, little craft are more maneuverable than big craft (not to mention far more vulnerable in a collision) and we usually do our best to stay out of their way, rather than forcing them to take action.

We finally ran out of wind around 3 am on our approach to the coast, and had to motor the last 10 hours or so. But this meant that the Wilmington River entrance was flat calm and easy - it's a natural channel with many shoals, so in rough weather it wouldn't be pleasant - and we even got enough wind to turn off the motor and sail on the river along with the Saturday day-trippers. Looking at all the people playing on the beach and jumping into the cool, greeny-brown water, we felt lucky to have spent the past three months in the clear waters of the Bahamas.

But now it's time to change mindset. We need to find a good place to store Windom, and we need to do a good job of storage so that next cruise won't start off with so much to do. So there's a lot of work ahead of us!