37:50.395 N  076:16.504 W

17/05/10

We left at 9AM having discovered the bow thruster will only thrust to Port, and starboard is what we needed, so we used a bow spring to kick the stern out from the dock.  It must be a connection somewhere.  It is a grey bleak morning with light rain as we left.

We motored slowly into an incoming tide and ESE 20 knot wind for an hour, when we turned the corner and set sail we zoomed off at 8-9 knots.  Its 9.8 as I type, with a very deeply reefed yankee and a double reefed main.  The wind is a steady ESE Force 6 gusting a bit more.  We’re only in 12 meters of water and there’s no sea to speak of.

Now the boat PC is not sending mail through Outlook Express, I have to get on the net to do it, which is extremely expensive. It receives mail okay.  More Face Book gremlins?????  The PC sends routes to the Navigation Plotter, but now it only sees waypoints and not the route, which I can get around but it’s irritating.

We knocked off the 58 miles to Reedville in  6 ½ hours. The weather has stayed horrible, cold and seriously rainy.  We are anchored near the town as the marina I thought to go to seems to be closed.  Anyway anchoring is much easier that trying to fit between piles with a lot of wind and without a bow thruster.  There are a lot of big fishing boats and processing factories as well.  We were warned about the aroma but we seem to be on the upwind side so it’s ok.

There’s no wi/fi here so I changed over to the satellite system and sent myself a test message with no problem.  Hmmm.

The weather’s too bad to want to get off the boat.  I’m not yet sure if we’ll push on tomorrow or wait for something better as the wind is due to shift North against us.