First nght sail
It is 3:27 AM. It is my watch. The breeze is light but I am going four knots which is good. I have figured out the cape horn auto pilot so I am not using any electricity. The moon is full and bright. During the night you can see further cuz the big ships have a ton of lights on. My only question is what stinking way are they moving. Sometimes it is easy to tell. Right now there are four huge freight boats all in a line and they are now all anchored. This must be a holding place for the freigters to hang out before they go in to land. At this moment it is peaceful and all is happy. I like happy sailing! I like when the cape horn auto pilot works!! Then I can look around more. Go down below and make some navigation marks. I can eat a peanut and raisin with almond sandwich, yumm. Actually rght now 3:34am the wind is just starting to die down. So I might be a drift soon. It will pick up again. There are not many stars cuz the moon is so bright. About half an hour ago I saw this big bunch o lights moving across my horizon. What way are they going? Then the light configuration changed meaning the just turned. Oh great. I don't want to wake up Ben cuz he will say "it's fine you have plenty of sea room" mind you, I was just about to When I said to myself, you can figure it out. I turned on the radar. Got the target activated and now tracking. It seemed to be turning away from me. But all day today I been playing with the radar in the light and I can't seem to get the direction of the vessels heading. Well it tells me a head but I know for a fact with my eyes that is not the heading. That doesn't seem to bother Ben (then again a lot of thngs don't bother him which is a redeeming quality which I am possessing more of) but this time I eould rather know the heading and I think it worked. ? Well atleast he did go south. Then again I also changed my course until I felt better. The challenge was which way should I head? Phew that all worked out and I didn't have to wake ben. The moon is now starting to change to a peach color. It is quiet out here except for the rigging. Ya know in pirates movie. The davey jones locker one... They had many moon night scenes. The rigging is a silouette the bow sprit is bobbing up and down and you hear the lines moaning in a rythmic fashion. How cool and Erie all at the sametime.
I feel like I am finally out of the way of all the big guys. Ahhh I can and am relaxing. Sailing at night is cooler and has a different feel than during the day. Humm can't describe it. Sorry. I'm just so glad I'm not in clouds rain and too much wind. !!! I will ditto that statement!
Now I can back up. We got up. Got ready to go. It was hot and very humid. Like right now it is wet out here from humidity but not hot. We made it out of the anchorage. It is right next to Langley field. So many F-16 or so flying around two by two in formation. Super loud. There were two huge navy boats a big white boat with the red cross on it. And a handful of freighters. Over load for me. We puttered out of the way and stayed out of the shipping lanes. Oh boy now the moon is turning more to orange as it sets. Looks like I have one more hour with my pal the moon. I'm not tired cuz this is such a new experience just like the movie scenes.
So here is a formula I have been developing. It is called the sleep ratio. If I think the anchor is 50% good. Well then I sleep half the night. If it is 90% good. Then I sleep most of the night. Now if the anchor watch is on I sleep 100% of the night cuz I have had many anchor watches go off when we turn 180 degrees which is good. And 100% of the time I wake up fly out of bed to see whazzz up. But if the anchor watch goes off and I am wide awake then my ratio is low cuz I'm awake and the anchor watch went off for some reason. Now at night sailing if I feel ben will stay awake that adds to my sleepable percentage. If I feel like he wants to sail offf the charts ( we only have a 25 x 25 mile radius of maps. We have gps that goes further but what if the gps fails or the battery runs out. See how much a safety freak I am. And ben is not. I woke up at midnight cuz there was a lot of banging (we had lost our wind so things were flappin) I looked on The map and we were at the furthest corner of the map. Ben yells down as he sees me looking, "I was just going to tack" if I was awake I would have said miles ago, let's tack. I went back to bed but could not sleep even though he was turning around. (the moon is bright orange!!) wowwza!!! Now on my shift which started at 1:20am. I had to start out motoring cuz we used up too much battery on something? Weird. So my first hour and a half I motored away from the four boat congestion. Well to me it was. And now I feel like all is going good at this moment.
Owen likes sailing at night. He was sleeping next to me. Now he is prowling around. How fun! Humans awake in the night. Oh boy!
Today while underway I cooked spam. Tasted like growing up. Spam keeps without refrigeration. I have to admit it was a yummy sandwich.
Wow the moon is orange almost down and a zillion stars are popping out everywhere. It is 4:21am. I have six more miles on thus tack. Today has been the first day of what I thought saili g would be like. Set a course. Watch for boats. Change course if needed. Take turns sailing. We took 2hour shifts during the day and four hour shifts at night. I got to read. Make food. Relax. A few days of this and I'm sure boredom would set in... Well I'd get more crafts done! To night I get to blog a long letter to you all. There is no service out here. But I am on a tack back west to shore so it might happen I get service enough to shoot this out to googlespace.
The moon is no longer lighting up the water and the way. It is getting D A R K!! I can still see two of the four anchorged ships and the beacon light. I can't see where the water ends and the sky starts like I could with the moon bright. Are you all on the edge of your seats with questions of, now what? Well I am. The moon is almost down. Time to play doodle jump or flight control. Wait a light on the dark horizon. Have to pay attention.
It must have been an alien ship cuz it is gone. I have not had any baileys on my shifts.
More later I am so tired ben and I just got back in to anchorage. On the way in we had dolphins playing around us! We even saw them in the waves!!! Also in the waves were sting rays. Oh and the dolphins jumped out of the water like at the zoo!!
Good night zzzzzzzz
Blessings on yours and my sleep!
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