Out to the North Atlantic

Monday, July 25:  Coleman fixed us a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, and biscuits, which were wonderful!  Then, around 9 am, we left HYC, raised our sails, headed out through the main shipping channel, passed over the Bay Bridge-Tunnel, out the mouth of the Chesapeake, and into the Atlantic.

On our way out, we saw several large freighters and navy ships coming and going, including a submarine!  It was on the surface, going pretty fast.  The sail of the sub was fully visible, while its hull was mostly under water.

Once at sea, we headed directly for Block Island, RI, some 350 nautical miles away.  It was a pleasant day, with high near 80, very humid and hazy.  Initially, the wind was SE at only 4 to 10 kt, so we motor sailed to keep up a reasonable speed (about 6 kt).  Later, the wind picked up for a while to 10 to 15 kt, so we were able to turn the engines off and just sail at 4 to 5 kt boat speed.  There was a gentle swell running at 2 to 3 feet and Bottlenose handled it with no problem.

As evening approached, the marine weather warned of a severe thunderstorm headed our way at 25 kt, with winds up to 50 kt.  We could see it coming on our radar screen.  We were going NE and the storm was going SE and it looked like it was going to hit us for sure.  Then the storm seemed to slow down and we decided to change course to try to avoid the worst of it.  We spent the better part of the next two hours trying to out-maneuver it, to no avail and without making any progress toward our destination.  So, finally we just put the boat back on course and went for it.

It turned out that the part of the storm we went through was just light rain with occasional lightning that was at least 5 miles away.  We were out of it in about 1 ½ hours.

After the storm passed, the wind died, the temperature was pleasantly cool, and we motored the rest of the night.  There was not much marine traffic.  The night was very dark and misty, so you could see little by eye.  We relied, therefore, on our radar to show us what was out there.  All we saw were a few commercial fishing boats that were well off in the distance and not anything we had to worry about.