Intemperance laying easy on a calm October evening

Right now the airport near where my boat is anchored is reporting winds of 22mph, with gusts to 33mph and I can hear the wind moaning in the trees around our house. It rained buckets all day long, making our last day of preparation a soggy and cold undertaking.

But the forecast has the rain stopping sometime around midnight, and the winds starting to slack around day break. By noon it should be a fine day for sailing, and we’ll shove off. With a little luck we’ll make the ~250 needed to clear the Gulf Stream before the next wintery blast. From there it’s another few days to Bermuda. If we’re tired, scarred, hurt, or broken, we’ll stop; otherwise once we pass Bermuda it’s another 700 or so miles South, till landfall somewhere in the Leeward Islands.

In case you’re wondering, no this is not a family trip. Peggy and the kids are staying here. I’m going with two friends, and my family will catch up with me (by airplane) later in the year.

If you’d like to follow along, you can go to our SPOT page, which will have updated position reports overlaid onto Google maps. As long as the dot keeps moving along, you’ll know we’re okay. There’s nothing there now, but by the afternoon tomorrow the page should show our little boat making its way into the Atlantic. By this time tomorrow we should be 50 miles out and hopefully be settling into life aboard our little home on the ocean.

Of course I am nervous; and excited too. I love adventures. This one feels like it’s going to be a good one!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 9:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.