When the winds change

As mentioned in my last post we had a beautiful week of sailing upon leaving Puerto Rico heading for the lower 48. The wind died about the 7th day leaving us the option of drifting along taking advantage of occasional breezes and maybe going 2 or 3 knots or turning the engine on. We had 70 plus gallons of fuel and were more than 2/3 of the way so we decided to run the motor for a while and hope the wind would pick back up. For the next 2 days the winds were light and variable and we ran the engine for the most part, giving it a break now and then. Michael and Justin saw 6 whales about 50-100 yards off the port side of the boat during one of their watches during this time.

We were into our second day of motoring, getting tired of having the motor on so much and beginning to look at our fuel consumption. It was getting iffy on whether or not we had enough fuel to motor the rest of the way to Charleston so we were going to have to do some slow sailing. Experience has taught us to be careful what you wish for, so instead of wishing for more wind, we said it would be nice to get a little bit of wind. That night we got the remnants of a system that come off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, bringing with it some pretty strong winds that had us reefing the main.

We had just finished reefing the main when we saw a flare off to our port side. Another sailboat off to our starboard side also saw it and called it in to the coast guard. About 15 minutes later another flare went off. The other boat (Homeward Bound) was not getting a making good radio contact with the coast guard and we ended up doing most of the communication, which was ok as we had also seen the flares. We turned the motor back on to head in the direction wase saw the flares from and spent about an hour (in the dark) looking for some sign of a vessel in distress or person afloat. The waves were propably 6-7 at this point and a few times it looked like we saw a faint light as we went up, but never really saw anything for sure.

By morning the wind had died down again and we motored the rest of the way to Charleston. On the way we had a few friends visit us. The first was a little bird that rested on the boat for about a half hour. While it was with us it briefly landed on Justin's knee and my shoulder. After exploring the boat a bit and resting up it took off again.

Later that day some dolphins came to play. Josie took some photos from the bow of the boat. The seas were calm again and the watere was clear.

We got into Charleston early that evening, anchoring off the James Island Yacht Club just before dark.