Wednesday 05July

Anout noon Wednesday
Early evening yeaterday we sailed out of the pesky thundershowers. The problem was that those showers always mess up the wind, and you never know which way to do what. Also the wind was very light, which doesn't give the boat much control. We motored most of the day just to get somewhere. Well, the showers stopped, the wind settled down, and we had a perfectly beautiful night, stars, and an almost full moon.
Try to follow me now: A modern sailboat can not sail into the wind, but can sail about 45 degrees off the wind, or you might say that it can sail 45 degrees into the wind. Hot shot new boats can sail even closer to the wind than 45 degrees. Adventis not a modern boat, and the best she can do, beating hard, is to sail 50 deggrees off the wind. And that is beating hard, heeling way over, driving into the waves, quite uncomfortable. The is called "Sailing to Weather", and "Gentlemen don't sail to weather." I decided that this will be an easy ktrip, no heroics. There will be no beating into the wind, so I we will not be rying to sail Advent's best, which is 50 degrees. The closests to the wind will be what is called a close reach, which is about 60 degrees off the wind. That means we can sail 60 degrees to the left of the wind, or 60 degrees to the right of the wind. If the wind is blowing from 240 degrees we can sail 240-60 or 180 degrees, straight south. If the wind is blowing from 240 degrees we can sail 24060, or 300 degrees to New York, adding the effect of the Gulf Stream, to Cape Cod.
Well, the gentile 12 knot wind IS blowing from 240 degrees, and veering and backing 40 degrees. We set the boqat up to sail with the wind coming from our left, a port tack, and sail at 300 degrees until we are going 320 degrees to Maine, then we tack, putting the wind coming from our right side, a starbd tack, and sail along at 320-120 or 200 degrees, a little west of straight south. We sail along for maybe an hour and, as the wind backs, the boat slowly goes from 200 to 190 to south to 170, to 160 towards Africa. So we tack again tto sail Towards Norfolk, then Baltimore, to New York. The wind is a bsolutely, exactly coming from the wron direction for where we want to go. It would be easy to sail to Newport RI, where most of the Rally to the Cup went, and it would be easy to sail towartds the Virgin Islands, but not to go th North Carolina. At noon today we are 55nm west of Gibbs Hill Lighthouse, Bermuda.
That is what is going on. Now a bigger picture. The Atlantic coast from Cape Hatteras down to Jacksonville Florida runs in a north-east / south-west direction. (It is hard to realize that Jamaca and most of the Bahamas is west of Cape Hatteras.) Off shore of the Atlantic coast is the Gulf Stream, flowing north-east, faster than we are sailing right now. If we could be sailing straight towards Wilmington at this speed, when we got to the Gulf Stream it would sweep us out past Cape Hatteras. So the plan is to sail south enough to enter thje Gulf Stream about Florida/Geogia and let it sweep us up while we cross through it, and come out of the strong current at North Carolina. Now the best we have been able to do is get straight west of Bermuda. It will really be nice if the wind changes and we can ease south about 100 miles.