35:11.573 N  075:07.220 W

11/05/10   14:00

We left Wrightsville Beach at 9:30 under cloudy skies and motored straight into an Easterly Wind reaching 25 knots. It was wind against tide which coupled with shallow water has made for a bumpy first  4 hours.  We are still  only in 20 metres of water and need to make a good easting to give Cape Hatteras a respectfully wide berth. The wind is meant to go more Southerly  soon which means we will be able to sail.

We’ve been digging is and the bow hurls masses  of water on deck.  When this happens there is a bit of carpet in the master aft cabin –my side of course- which gets damp.  I thought we’d solved that issue, but apparently not.

15:00

The wind has finally clocked South and now we’re sailing at 7/8 knots.  We’re still in less that 30 meters of water, its no wonder this area has such a bad rep when the weather gets up. We’ve got another 40 miles or so of Easting before we start working our way up. The course will still be North East for a while.  The wind should strengthen later but it will be with us.

21:00

We’ve having some store bought yellow fin tuna for dinner, so naturally we just caught a modestly sized skip jack tuna. 

The wind has dropped but we’re still sailing at 5/6 knots.  No sunset tonight as it was too cloudy.  Sounds of distant thunder but nothing showing on the radar screen.  Whilst typing, our speed has gone up to 8 knots. Make that 9.

12/05/10    00:00

Wind steady from the South. One reef in the Yankee.  Going smoothly for sleeping. Still only about 40 metres under the keel.  ETA currently very early Thursday AM.

07:00

I went to bed at midnight and slept well until the  3AM watch change when Steve and Graham set the pole to  starboard and we rolled like mad for the next 3 hours,  On my watch at 6 Steve and I gybed the pole to Port and the motion improved immeasurably.

Our speed  dropped a lot during the night and at the moment we are only making a little over 5 knots. We’re pretty much abeam of Cape Hatteras in about 130 meters of water.  Current ETA late Thursday afternoon.  We’re supposed to have 20 knots of wind from the SW instead we have 10 knots  WSW.  At least we’re not motoring.

09:30 

Not much of a dawn this morning, too much horizon cloud but it has now cleared and the sun is with us for the first time in two days.  The wind hasn’t really been that great.  In our first 23 hours we only managed 154 miles, the first 5 ½ of which were under engine.  174 to go.

Sorry no snaps today.