Saturday 20th April 2013
We had a bit of excitement last night with the Tornado alert, the wind picked up really quick the sky went very dark, and we decided to start the engine to keep us from dragging the anchor.
It worked fine and the wind settled down but it rained almost all night, and the best part no Tornado
And the journey continues, we are right at this moment taking on water, as we can not make water until we reach the ocean, it needs to be salt water and here in the bay is not salty enough just yet.
We plan to get to Norfolk, it may take a full day to get there, and then we wait, for the next weather window, as we do not want to be out in the Atlantic Ocean, crossing the gulf stream in bad weather.
3pm my watch.
We have sailed most of the time without the engine running, it was so and quiet, but the wind died and on went the engine for half an hour or so.
But now we are doing quite good again with no engine.
So all is good and nothing exciting happened, that's me done and dusted.
11pm my watch,
Man I hate this watch, not only am I tired but it's so dark with a lot of lights blinking around.
It's hard to make out the lights on land and what are boats.
At the moment we have the new AIS system working and I'm watching a tug boat pulling a barge beside us, on the lap top I can see all his info, it even tells me how fast he is going and the name and all. It's quite something, well worth the money.
So after watching a lot of ships coming and going and only waking Tom up once, when a tug and barge got a bit too close for comfort, nothing much happened, the Captain came up and took over from me, and this one tired puppy is off to bed.
OMG...we are being tossed all over the place, things are flying everywhere in here, the wind has picked up to over 25knots, I fly up the stairs well kinda as best as I could, to see the Captain on deck frantically trying to get the sails down Tom steering to help him as much as possible as they need to slow the boat down.
She is going way too fast the wind is shocking its freezing cold, big ships and tug boats all over the place and we are trying hard to stay out of the shipping lane.
We have reached Norfolk, we were trying to get there in daylight as there is just way to much happening in this area, to be here in the dark and not to mention being in such strong winds and very very rough water.
We finally managed to get all the sails in and are now just trying to stay out of the way from all the boats.
It is shocking I hate this, and none of us have had any sleep other than the guys got a few hours before there shift.
Well we finally made it, I went down to have a bit of a sleep and try and warm up, I was chilled to the bone, I have just woken up and all looks right again in the world thank god.
Well tomorrow is another day.