We arrived at the inlet and were safely anchored by 1 pm. Most of the day was spent ocean sailing after no sleep. The wind continued to blow from the north behind us. The sea became even more confused as we neared Palm Beach. It was a short inlet but waters were calm inside, a relief. The anchorage was close to the inlet. We found a spot and anchored and set our anchor alarm, cleaned up the cockpit and went to sleep. The rest of the boat was a mess with jackets all over and rolls of paper towels on the floor.
We woke up after the sun had set. We made dinner and talked about the passage. Both of us found it rather miserable, but we did manage to make a considerable distance. We were not seasick. We were certainly caffeine deficient which probably played a role in how bad we felt. Going to add some Starbucks small canned espresso shots to the list. We had stored some hot water for later in a thermos but that only made one warm drink each and that was not enough for a 26 hour passage. We had plenty of food and snacks but maybe making sandwiches ahead of time would be good next time.
The night sailing continues to be our most stressful venture. You really can see lighted boats nearby but you feel like you won’t. With AIS, there is no way a tanker or large commercial vessel could sneak up on us. AIS is amazing technology. It stands for automated information system. Ships have transponders that let you know vessel location, size, name, course and speed in real time. When there is a nearby boat that has this, a little boat symbol appears on our chartplotter screen. When we touch the symbol, it tells us the boat name, what kind of boat it is, its status ( moving or anchored) and its speed. If it is headed toward us, its little boat symbol is heading toward our little boat symbol.
We could see other ships with AIS on our screen. When we could not see them in real life, we would call them on the radio and make sure they could see us. One boat we spoke with said they could not see us on their AIS which really scared us. The next boat we spoke with said we were showing up on his. Usually when we called the other boats, they were just too far away for us to see their lights. They definitely have to be closer at night for us to see them.
We are glad to be this far. The water here is a beautiful blue. We have even more respect for ocean sailors and solo racers who do this sort of thing for days on end.
*Editorial note
(The staff at Josiespath applogizes for an inadvertent test email that went out to subscribers earlier today. The highly compensated IT department continually is working on opportunities for improvement and will try to do better)
