Glass

Early start this morning. We have a forty mile day. Ten hours. It's a lovely, calm morning. The sea is glass. There's patchy fog. We had the radar display up for a while.

I use a split screen on the plotter to show our charted position on one half and the radar image on the other half. The radar is used to show the invisible boats: fishing boats and yachts in the fog without identification transponders.

There's an ebb current flowing, pushing us along at a speed that is a knot and a half faster than the speed of the boat through the water. 5 kts through the water and 1.5 kts current gives us 6.5 kts speed over ground (SOG).

I should eat some breakfast. Cream of wheat today, loaded with honey yogurt, berries, banana slices, and peaches. I'll start it after I've steered us through these rocks.

Our destination today was to be Murray Labyrinth, but it turns out Opus' draft is 9 feet. That's the depth of the keel under the water line. The entrance to Murray has 7 feet of water at low tide. So there will be enough depth when the tide is two feet or more. Rather than worry about the depth and the tides we decided to go to Allison Harbor instead.

The cream of wheat is on the stove. Matt rarely eats breakfast, prefers a cup of coffee. I rarely eat lunch, prefer a big breakfast. So he'll eat most of the lunch provisions, The cold cuts, cheese slices and sliced bread. I'll eat most of the breakfast provisions, the berries, bananas, yogurts, walnuts and cereals.

We used the bbq for the first time last night, salmon with mashed red potatoes and steamed broccoli. Deeelish!

1pm Now and raining. We're thankful for Quijote's auto helm. We set the boat's heading, hit "Auto" and the auto-helm maintains that heading. It allows us to hide from the weather while the boat drives itself. Of course we have to keep watch so we don't hit a log, another boat, or run aground. Opus is configured for racing, which prohibits the use of an auto-helm. Kevin steered in the rain all afternoon.

And what a wet afternoon and evening it turned out to be. Matt and I made another pressure cooker recipe: Rigatoni Bolognese. Exceptional. We ate it with a loaf of sour dough bread fresh out of the oven, one of the bake at home loaves.

With that, This post is a wrap!