If you have been viewing GANNET’s Yellowbrick tracking page, you have seen us anchored in Mobjack Bay, Virginia, since 3:35 yesterday afternoon.
As we entered the Chesapeake in the morning, NOAA weather, which to my surprise I was able to receive on my handheld VHF 30 and 40 miles offshore, announced a Small Craft Advisory for today and tomorrow with rain and east wind of 20-25 knots, gusting 30. There is protection from east wind here. Getting here was a struggle described in the passage log which I will upload separately later today or tomorrow.
I had always intended to daysail the final one hundred miles inside the Chesapeake to St. Michaels. This is constant on deck, on watch sailing. Land on both sides. Ships, other boats, shoals, and an infinity of buoys and markers.
If the forecast is correct, I will remain here until Tuesday morning.
Of the passage, I had some fine sailing, three nights of less than four hours sleep each, experienced brutal beauty, and though I never entered the monastery of the sea, there is nothing I could have better done these past five days.
I shot many short videos on iPhone, GoPro and Nikon AW1. I need to view them on my MacBook to decide which, if any, are worth sharing, but will not be able to upload them to YouTube until I have a wi-fi connection. Here I am using my iPhone as a hotspot.
Rain has not yet fallen on us. The wind is 19 knots and GANNET is moving about on short waves. Nothing extreme. The sky is completely gray and the temperature remains in the 70s. Quite pleasant.
I sorted out the cabin this morning and did some minor repairs.
I was very tired when I arrived and, after anchoring, went on deck. Fortuitously I found the Boom 2 speakers needed charging. This was fortuitous because as I sipped my gin and tonic, I listened not to music, however beautiful and charming, but to the sounds of slight wind and ripples of water lapping at GANNET.
I like being at anchor and realized that we really haven’t been in two years, not since Australia. In Durban, St.Lucia, Marathon, Skull Creek, GANNET was in marinas. But as you know if you have been here a while, I would rather be on a mooring than in a marina where that is possible. I like having water between me and the world. There are many places to anchor near Hilton Head Island. If Carol and I continue to own the condo there and GANNET returns after completing her circumnavigation next year, we will go out and enjoy them.
Rain just started.
