Night Watches

Saturday nights beautiful sunset

We decided that St Augustine would be our first stop on the way up the coast to spend the summer in the Chesapeake. We calculated it at 210 miles as the tern flies (there aren’t crows over water, but there sure are a lot of terns!) and knew that a friend of ours had completed the trip in 44 hours recently, having run into bad weather. We assumed we would be able to average at least 5 knots, given the forecast of 5-10 knots of wind during the day and 10-15 knots during the evenings. By leaving at 1:30 am on Saturday (note we did NOT leave on a Friday!) we figured we’d be picking up the mooring ball in St Augustine around dinner time on Sunday. 40 hours – at 4 hour shifts that meant 5 shifts for me, 5 for Ben. Do-able. Even for this wimp.

I wanted to take the first shift…get it out-of-the-way and I’d only have 4 more shifts to go! I was slightly nervous to be alone at the helm at night (and by slightly nervous I mean legs shaking, hands sweating and butterflies summersaulting in my tummy!) having never done it before. Every other time I’ve been at the helm there have always seemingly been a zillion fishing boats to watch out for and cruise ships and cargo tankers trying to run us down, so I guess that was what I was picturing the night sails would be like, only I wouldn’t be able to see the boats! Sure, no problem, I was up for the challenge (hence the shaking legs, etc…).

Saturday nights amazing moonrise. It was almost full! It’s hard to take night photos on a moving boat!

I was not prepared for the peaceful, calm, quiet and sereneness of night sails! That first shift we motored due to a lack of wind, so that wasn’t so quiet, but my 2am-6am shift on Sunday was by far the most spectacular experience of my life! The winds had (FINALLY!!!!) picked up so we were humming along at 7+ knots. The seas were calm, calm, calm, just the way I like them! Ben was all curled up in the salon snoring his cute little snore, reassuring me that he was just around the corner if I needed anything. And then there were the stars. Oh the stars! The stars were AMAZING. We were 30 miles offshore so had no city lights lighting up the sky and all I could see for miles were stars. More stars than I even knew existed…an unbelievable, awe-inspiring amount of stars. There were no boats to dodge, as a matter of fact there was not one other boat out there with us! No land in sight, no city lights anywhere to be found, just a sea of calm blackness and stars, stars, stars. There are few times in my life when I can remember being so relaxed and feeling at peace. It was a very weird feeling, considering I am always a bundle of nerves just waiting for something to go wrong. So I just sat at the helm and gazed at the stars and felt, well I guess I just felt peace. It was a refreshing change of pace! Knowing that I’d only have 1 more 4 hour shift certainly didn’t hurt either! And then it hit me….we’re not as far along as we’re supposed to be to get to St Augustine by that afternoon. As a matter of fact, we were only at the half way point. HALF WAY? Surely we were further than half way, weren’t we? Another double-check on the GPS, another calculation confirmed that after 26 hours at this, we were in fact only…half way. So much for 40 hours.

My little dolphin friend coming to keep me coming on one of my watches! 🙂

After another full (and blazing hot) day on the water we had yet one more overnight passage to go. Sadly, this one was not as calm and serene as the previous. A small squall popped up, bringing with it 5-7 foot seas on our beam with 8-10 foot swells coming from behind, and the wind directly on our nose: a confused sea indeed….we both endured that last night watch together (except when I left Ben at the helm while I took a Dramamine and gave it some time to kick in). We decided we’d had enough and it was time for the engines to get us through the slop! And of course while going through the inlet, the port engine died and we had to enter the challenging inlet with only our starboard engine. Thankfully, I am married to Mr. Calm who just kept right on going like nothing bad had happened…he’s my hero. It ended up taking us 56 hours to get to St. Augustine. By 9:30 Monday morning we were safely attached to the mooring ball and ready to take on the town….after a long, long, long nap!