Last night we turned the corner! We are now flying on a reach with the wind coming from our aft starboard quarter at 17 to 19nm. There is an accompanying current which combined with sail setup has us flying along 8 to 8.5nts over ground. Occasional gusts set off the speed alarm set for 9nts, if we keep hitting the alarm it’s time to bring in some sail. Usually we bring in the Genoa since on this particular boat given the way it is setup the genoa is the ‘accelerator”
Our current plan is to make Cape Lookout by Saturday. Originally we were shooting for Saturday late night, but we might make it earlier now. We are racing along a north by northwest course of 325 degrees. We hope to cross the Gulf Stream Current sometime late Friday. We can then sail on a run with the current into Cape lookout and anchor. The last 200 miles into Chesapeake Bay may have to wait a day or so in that it appears we will run out of wind on Saturday and Sunday. Our plan is still to make landfall to Hampton, VA.
Last night was a rather dramatic sail as the wind came around behind us. Late night in the dark we hung the pole to put the genoa out on the starboard side while using the preventer on the main sail to port. This upped our speed to 8 -9nts in 23- 24nts of wind. The 9nts alarm kept going off on my watch, so we did the only sensible thing to do, we reset it to 10nts. At that speed with the roll and the darkness it was quite a night! We now have another boat, yonder, which is headed to the same anchorage. As a matter of pride we need to beat him there.
