Alana anchored in the St. Johns River, just north of the Bar Cut Range, at about 2:45 this morning. I had not originally planned to get here so early, but favorable winds allowed Alana and me to make pretty good time down the Georgia coast. It took a while for the anchor to grab the hard bottom, and I was starting to despair, but we have since been through both flood and ebb tides without dragging, so I am beginning to relax.
Today is forecast to be one filled with rain and light winds, a good day to chillax in port, tidy up, feast and get ready to do it again tomorrow. The next planned stop is Cape Canaveral, where I hope to arrive Tuesday. I’ll then rent a car and spend Thanksgiving with Jessica and her family in Inverness, FL before resuming my journey toward Pensacola.
Alana is 1,600 sailing miles into this adventure. I see that we are 886 nautical miles from Salem, MA where it all began. This 2:1 ratio is skewed by the week spent tooling around in the Chesapeake Bay, but is still a little startling. I think that it is also distorted by the fact that I have for the most part, been sailing regardless of the wind direction. If the circumstances permitted, I could certainly have improved the ration by hanging out in ports until ideal winds present themselves. I have generally taken the approach that some distance toward my destination is better than none, so have wasted a lot of time beating to windward – not Alana’s best point of sail. I think that I probably need to tighten the forestay to get a little sag out of the headsails, but for now, I'm just going to live with it.
Today is forecast to be one filled with rain and light winds, a good day to chillax in port, tidy up, feast and get ready to do it again tomorrow. The next planned stop is Cape Canaveral, where I hope to arrive Tuesday. I’ll then rent a car and spend Thanksgiving with Jessica and her family in Inverness, FL before resuming my journey toward Pensacola.
Alana is 1,600 sailing miles into this adventure. I see that we are 886 nautical miles from Salem, MA where it all began. This 2:1 ratio is skewed by the week spent tooling around in the Chesapeake Bay, but is still a little startling. I think that it is also distorted by the fact that I have for the most part, been sailing regardless of the wind direction. If the circumstances permitted, I could certainly have improved the ration by hanging out in ports until ideal winds present themselves. I have generally taken the approach that some distance toward my destination is better than none, so have wasted a lot of time beating to windward – not Alana’s best point of sail. I think that I probably need to tighten the forestay to get a little sag out of the headsails, but for now, I'm just going to live with it.
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