Calm

Where Next?
Bob Williams
Wed 18 Jul 2007 21:17

Noon Position:  42 34.3 N  067 19.2 W

Course: 090, Speed: 4 knots

Wind: Northeast 8 knots

Daily Run: 62 miles

Average speed: 2.6 knots

 

A glance at the figure for our day’s run sums up the last 24 hours, slow.  Not that slow doesn’t have its own rewards, calm peaceful conditions make it easy to cook, sleep, read and stay dry.  The terns continue to wheel and glide around the boat, but the dolphins it seems are rather aloof in this part of the world, swimming past us, rarely coming over to say hello, maybe we are just too slow to play with.  This morning a young gull landed near the boat and managed to keep up with us with an easy paddle, it’s dark eyes expecting something, probably a fish of which I had none to give, certainly a piece of bread I tossed was closely inspected and then rejected as inedible.

 

This afternoon the wind has shifted into the northeast, still light, but we are sailing.   It is so quiet you can hear the tide turn.  Here at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy large volumes of water daily pass back and forth.  It sounds like a cross between a rain shower and water suddenly flowing over a dry river bed.  You hear it approaching, the sound growing and then surround you as the water’s surface transforms from glass to ripples.  A short while later the ears have grown accustomed to the new noise and what seemed loud now fades to background and you have to concentrate to hear it, then the turning tidal boundary passes and once more the water’s surface turns imperceptibly to glass.

 

The forecast promises us a fresh south-westerly later today so hopefully we will start to reel off some miles tomorrow.